Queer Fish

1936

Queer Fish, 1936. Mabel Dwight (American, 1876–1955). Lithograph; platemark: 27 x 33 cm (10 5/8 x 13 in.); sheet: 32.8 x 45.5 cm (12 15/16 x 17 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection 1941.480 Mabel Dwight often visited the Battery neighborhood’s aquarium in Manhattan, which had opened in 1896 and was where, as she wrote in her unpublished autobiography, she observed the “expressions of aloof wonder” of the people staring through the glass to the “small world” beyond. She wrote humorously about the scene depicted in the print, describing how, during one visit, she observed a man and a grouper fish trying to outstare one another until “both swam away." Founded in 1896, the New York Aquarium, where this scene takes place, was located in the Battery of lower Manhattan until it was relocated to Coney Island in 1941.