Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Storm Scene, de Neuville & Riou, 1871
Created for the 1871 Hetzel illustrated edition of Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,' this engraving appeared at the dawn of science fiction as a literary genre. Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou's collaboration produced some of the most iconic Verne illustrations ever published. Here, two figures cling desperately to a vessel's superstructure as a ferocious storm lashes them with rain and lightning, capturing Verne's vision of mankind at the mercy of nature's fury on the open sea.
A masterclass in Victorian dramatic tension — lightning splitting a churning sky while desperate figures cling to a rain-battered hull. Restrained by pulp standards but enormously influential on the adventure-illustration tradition that would later fuel the pulps.
