A History of Painting (With Dinosaurs) is a 2022 book by palaeoartist John Conway (All Yesterdays).
The book is a collection of art of dinosaurs note done up In the Style of other, more stylistic forms of paintings, from painters of The Renaissance to Rembrandt to Andy Warhol, imaging how they might have drawn them in their own styles.
Tropes:
- Anachronism Stew:
- Modern dinosaur designs with feathers, supinated hands, and whatnot appear well even before the world knew what dinosaurs were. It’s lampshaded in the foreword which puzzles over it.
- Quite a few of the side texts give dates for where each subject genus lived, but many are way off. The more egregious examples are:
- Pteranodon is said to live 70 million years ago, when it lived 83 million years ago.
- Dilophosaurus did not live 220 million years ago, as the label for a Matisse-inspired piece states, nor was that date part of the Early Jurassic period.
- Excuse Plot: The book’s introduction contains reference to an art collector who assembled a now-lost collection of the paintings, but that’s forgotten about in favour of presenting the parade of each art piece in question.
- Mona Lisa Smile: Patsiched with a Heterodontosaurus in place of the lady.
- Pastiche: All of the book's art are these of various paintings from throughout history with dinosaurs replacing the subject of eavh.
- Riddle for the Ages: How did artists from throughout history get (non-avian) dinosaurs so right even before they were even discovered, and why did no one notice all the while?
- "The Scream" Parody: “The Scream” is among the works pastiched, where an unnamed troodont fans it wings, its head mimicking the shape of the Scream’s head.
