You’ve reached the vintage natural history illustrations gallery! Our biggest collection of unique animal, plants, science and landscape illustrations from the 19th and early 20th centuries. You’re about to go down a rabbit-hole which might see you finding illustrations of actual rabbit-holes, mushrooms, eagles, palm trees, sea anemones, flowers, beetles, jellyfish, lions, crystals, and just about anything else you can think of in our wide and wonderful world.

Capturing the natural world through illustration, whether that be sketches, line drawing, lithographs, or watercolor has been essential in moving science and art forward. Even today, with photography at our fingertips, there is still an understanding that the act of looking and drawing forces us to notice details we may have missed. As you look through the gallery, particularly the scientific illustrations, take note of the exquisite detail the artists have captured.

We’ll be adding more to this gallery as we come across new sources in the public domain! All easy for you to grab here when you need it – and best of all, totally copyright free!

We’ve spent hundreds of hours sourcing the best and most fascinating illustrations from the public domain and compiled them just for you. PLUS we’ve optimized them so they’re ready for you to use in your own design or projects. We’ve isolated most of the images, tidied them up, and removed pesky grainy backgrounds. Best of all, it’s totally free to download them and because they’re copyright free, there are no restrictions as to how you use them.

So, ready to dive in? If it’s a bit overwhelming (we get it, nature is BIG) you can narrow things down by choosing smaller categories in the sidebar to your right. Otherwise, we hope you love this gallery as much as we do.

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