The Musée de l’Image d’Épinal is dedicating its new temporary exhibition to the sea, from October 31, 2026 to May 23, 2027. Curated by Émilien Lefèvre, Sea in Sight! brings together chapbooks, ship models, and scholarly plates from its collections, supplemented by loans from the Vodou Museum in Strasbourg and the Stanislas Library in Nancy.

The sea covers 71% of the planet and is home to more than a million species, only a small fraction of which have been identified. From Antiquity to the Middle Ages, marine animals were classified according to their appearance, lifestyle, or usefulness. Sixteenth-century scholars undertook to observe, describe, and classify them differently, and in the nineteenth century, popular education brought this new knowledge into people's homes. Illustrated plates, books, and educational materials then took on the task of naming and classifying marine fauna for the general public, and the imagery of Épinal was one of the vehicles for this dissemination.

The scientific revolution sought to separate real animals from wondrous creatures, but discoveries remained uncertain and, in turn, fueled new beliefs. In the 19th century, even as science advanced, the press and picture book publishers continued to recount sailors' encounters with monsters, presented sometimes as spectacular news items, sometimes as tales.

Shipwreck runs through the entire selection. Robinson Crusoe opens with it and establishes the genre of Robinsonades, where the island serves as a lens through which to observe society from the outside, while Paul and Virginia saves it for the end and makes it the seal of fate. Image-making centers adapted these successes, and the museum displays the Shipwreck of the Virginia, a lithograph printed in 1840 by E. Lordereau. Then came the real disaster, which propaganda seized upon. When the Avenger of the People sank in 1794, Bertrand Barère's speech before the Convention was enough to turn it into a republican myth, which image-makers revived throughout the century.