14 Free Animal Posters From Illustrated Larousse Dictionaries
A printable collection of vintage Animal posters from one of two famous French-illustrated Larousse Dictionaries. They are in the public domain.
Nouveau Larousse illustré : Dictionnaire Universel Encyclopédique et Le Larousse pour tous. Both were published in France between 1898 and 1924.
Many of the wonderful zoological illustrations were by French naturalist painter Adolphe Millot. I have already showcased his natural history posters of insects and birds, his sealife posters and his wonderful antique botanicals. Here I will focus on the vintage Larousse animal posters.
The Free Zoological Posters
To download the vintage animal posters, click the title above the poster. A higher-resolution image should open in a new tab in your browser. Then either print straight from your browser or save the poster to your hard drive.
If you're printing from a home printer, I recommend going into your printer's advanced menu settings and selecting the best quality print you can.
1. Animal Posters Fourrures (fur)
This animal poster is from Le Larousse Pour Tous and is of furry animals. As this is a French illustration by Adolphe Millot, it lists all the animals with their French names.
The poster includes wolves, foxes, otters, rabbits, and moles, to name a few.
Fur is defined as a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of many animals. It is a characteristic feature of mammals and consists of oily guard hairs on top and thick underfur beneath.
Fur helps both waterproof the skin and insulate animals. It has many uses: protection, sensory functions, waterproofing, and camouflage, with the primary use being temperature regulation.
Interestingly, the poster includes a couple of animals that don't have fur, such as the swan and duck. That is probably because these animals' feathers are collected and used commercially.
Mammals
2. Adolphe Millot Mammiferes A-Pour Tous
This is the first of two mammal posters in Le Larousse Pour Tous.
Mammals are animals with skeletons and have distinctive characteristics that distinguish them from reptiles and birds. These include producing milk for their young. They also have fur or hair on their bodies and three middle ear bones.
This first mammal poster features many of Africa's largest animals, such as giraffes, elephants, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses.
3. Adolphe Millot Mammiferes B-Pour Tous
The second animal poster of mammals. This poster includes monkeys and apes, big and small wild cats (such as tigers), and sea mammals.
For more wonderful images of mammals, visit this collection of vintage animal prints.
4. More Mammals From Larousse Illustre
Another poster of mammals from the French Illustrated dictionary.
Right in the centre is the largest land mammal, the elephant.
This zoological poster is mainly of clawed wild mammals. Animals include wild cats, bears, and primates.
More wild mammals: a lot of the animals on this zoological poster have hooves.
Domesticated Animals
7. Domesticated Animals Poster
A collection of domestic animals from pets such as cats and dogs to farm animals such as cattle, pigs and chickens. The poster even includes caged bird pets such as canaries.
Another poster of domestic mammals includes various species of dogs, farm animals and small pets such as rabbits.
Reptiles
9. Vintage Animal Poster of Reptiles
Reptiles include animals such as turtles, crocodiles, snakes, and lizards. Some of the characteristics of reptiles are that they are cold-blooded. These animals have to use sun and shade to regulate their internal body temperature.
All reptiles have scales or scutes. Scutes are the shells of turtles and the armour of crocodiles and are very similar to scales. Also, unlike mammals, reptiles lay eggs.
10. More Vintage Reptile Illustrations
Anthropods
Arthropods are invertebrates with an exoskeleton, a segmented body, and paired, jointed appendages. They account for 80 per cent of all animal species.
Arthropods must moult (shed their skin, the exoskeleton) to grow. Common arthropods include spiders, insects, mites, ticks, shrimp, lobster, scorpions, crayfish, and barnacles.
Black and White Zoological Posters
A few of the Animal posters in the original Larousse Dictionaries were in black and white but had different images from the posters above. I thought I'd share them too.
13. Mammals Black & White Poster 2
I hope you enjoyed these fabulous animal illustrations and zoological posters. You will probably enjoy some of the other zoological collections I have on Pictureboxblue. These include cool polar bear art, vintage illustrations of rabbits and toucan paintings.
You can find the complete Adolphe Millot poster collection here, and three posters from Larousse here.
If you enjoyed these vintage posters, then check out this collection of educational geography posters. This collection of nature posters by Oliver Goldsmith features many animal posters.
If you fancy, you can Buy Me A Coffee Here.
Excellent illustrative images, it hurts that its size is not larger
I know but unfortunately, these are the largest I could find. Don't forget the downloaded images are larger than the ones shown, just click on the title above.