Richard Ellis is one of America’s leading marine conservationists, and is generally recognized as the foremost painter of marine natural history subjects in the world. His paintings of whales have appeared in Audubon, National Wildlife, Australian Geographic,the Encyclopedia Britannica, and numerous other national and international publications. His shark paintings have been featured in Sports Afield, Audubon, Sport Diver, Nautical Quarterly, Reader’s Digest, and of course his own Book of Sharks—now in its seventh printing, and called the most popular book on sharks ever written. His paintings have been exhibited at one-man and group shows from coast to coast. In 2005, in conjunction with the Italian publication of his Encyclopedia of the Sea, Richard Ellis was given a one-man show of his drawings at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa.
Ellis is the author of more than twenty books on marine life, including Great White Shark, Men and Whales, Monsters of the Sea, The Search for the Giant Squid, The Empty Ocean, Tuna: A Love Story, The Great Sperm Whale,and Shark: A Visual History. In 2012, he was awarded the Explorers Club Communications Award and the Herman Melville Literary Award from the New York State Marine Education Association for his contributions to conservation literature. He lives in New York City.
