Le Poulpe Colossal

If this isn’t quite the ur-Kraken of illustration history, it’s one of them, reproduced countless times when sea monster depictions are required. The source is Histoire naturelle, générale et particuliere, des mollusques, animaux sans vertèbres et a sang blanc (1802) by Felix de Roissy, some of whose other illustrations are in this Flickr set from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

There are further cephalopodic curios in the BHL Mollusks and Invertebrates sets, the example below being from Résultats des campagnes scientifiques accomplies sur son yacht (1889), a fine collection of what the French would call aquarelles.