The birds come back first, to the thing on the bank

A handling machine lies collapsed on the bank at the left, legs and cables folded under it and one long arm still reaching out over the slope; carrion birds circle above and settle on the wreck. Below, a timber bridge has come down into still water, its beams crossed at broken angles and reflected in the surface. Bare shoots and seed-heads are drawn in fine detail along the right edge, against an empty pale sky.

Henrique Alvim Corrêa (1876–1910) was born in Rio de Janeiro and settled as a young man in Belgium, where he worked at the edge of the Brussels Symbolist circle. He began drawing scenes from H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds on his own initiative, and when Wells saw the portfolio he gave it his blessing — he is said to have remarked that Alvim Corrêa had done more for his book with a brush than he had with a pen. The drawings appeared in the deluxe Brussels edition published by L. Vandamme & Co in 1906: 500 numbered copies, a hundred illustrations in the text and thirty-two full plates. Corrêa died of tuberculosis four years later, at thirty-four. The plates are still the images most readers picture when they imagine Wells's Martians, and they set the pattern for a century of science-fiction art.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.