Gustave Doré's Sea Monster Beach Scene, Baron Munchausen 1860s

On a fog-shrouded shore, a colossal coiled sea beast writhes with its gaping maw wide open, fanged and dripping, while a cluster of bewildered bird-like creatures stand transfixed before it. Stranger still, bulbous flying organisms drift through the overcast sky above anchored ships. A tiny figure scrambles in the foreground. This is the impossible world of Baron Munchausen rendered in Doré's virtuosic cross-hatching — grotesque, grandiose, and gloriously absurd.