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 This blog is not dead yet – more in a state of hibernating due to some  changes in the life settings of its writer. I had no opportunity to  update anything substantial in 2018 and missed the opportunity to keep  you updated about: Fantastic Beast and How to Make Them or about the Fish and Fiction exhibition at the Leiden University Library. I have to admit: If the blog was a fish, it would be smelly by now. However, more updates and the restart of this project is planned for July and August 2019. William Merritt Chase ,  Still Life: Fish, 1908 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)The "Still Life: Fish" by William Merritt Chase (1846-1916) was painted in 1908. " The canvas shows a tabletop with a plate containing a striped bass and a salmon; a weakfish lies directly on the table and a bowl appears in the background. Chase's goal seems to have been to make what he called an uninteresting subject so inviting and entertaining by means of fine technique that people will be charmed at the way you've done it. " (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/08.139.2/)Along these lines I am looking forward to the summer to work again on Fish in time and history.