Dark Side of the Moon – Riou Engraving, Jules Verne Around the Moon 1870

Created during the 1870s, when Jules Verne was reshaping popular imagination with hard-edged scientific romance, this exquisite wood engraving depicts the projectile-crew's harrowing view of the Moon's dark, cratered face looming against a star-filled void. The luminous full Moon peers from behind the shadowed sphere with an almost anthropomorphic expression — a visual flourish typical of Édouard Riou's illustrative work for Verne's 'Autour de la Lune,' blending astronomical realism with Romantic wonder.