April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Organizations around the world have commemorated the occasion by participating in the global Earth Optimism movement — an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian to “turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity”.

Throughout 2020, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and our partners are joining the movement by sharing conservation success stories from and made possible by the BHL collection. Follow our blog for conservation stories — past and present — and visit our website for more information and to explore our Earth Optimism book collection.

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“Nature, nevertheless, is the great teacher to which the artist who would hope to imitate her, however crudely, must ever turn for instruction and for inspiration.”

-Frederick Law Olmsted, Editorial: “Foreign Plants and American Scenery” in Garden and Forest 1 (1888)

Considered the father of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted co-designed many of the most well-known urban parks and landscapes in the United States in partnership with Calvert Vaux (Wikipedia). As Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “Was there a patch of grass in nineteenth-century America that he didn’t design? Stanford, Prospect Park, and the Biltmore Estate, in North Carolina; the space around the United States Capitol and preservation plans for Niagara Falls and Yosemite.” In addition to his impressive accomplishments in landscape architecture, including seventeen large urban parks across the United States — most notably Central Park, he was also a journalist, abolitionist, gentleman farmer, and conservationist (Ranney, 3).

Olmsted’s genius was perfectly matched to the age in which he lived: “Olmsted lived from 1822 to 1903, a life which spanned the transformation of America from an agricultural nation of ten million people to an industrial one of seventy-five million. At a time when the frontier was closing and Americans were moving to the cities, Olmsted believed that nature had a controlling effect on man’s behavior. So he undertook in the course of a long career to save nature or recreate it for new industrial conditions” (Ranney, 3).

Born in Hartford, Connecticut to a dry goods merchant, Olmsted attended Yale University for one semester before acquiring a farm on Staten Island, which he eventually referred to as Tosomock; the author Witold Rybczynski speculates, “I have been unable to identify the source of Tosomock. Perhaps it is a combination of ‘toss’ and ‘amok,’ which would mean ‘flinging oneself headlong,’ a good characterization of Olmsted’s frame of mind” (Rybczynski, 77).

Olmsted, Frederick Law. Forty Years of Landscape Architecture; being the Professional Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Senior. 1922-28. Contributed in BHL from the University of California Libraries.

In 1850, at the age of twenty-eight, Olmsted traveled to England and wrote a book about farming methods there entitled Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (Gopnik). In a letter to his father asking for permission to accompany his brothers on the trip, which would last months, he is both concerned with appearances — he’d been “accused of irresponsiblity” and instability in the past — as well as leaving the farm untended that long. In a lengthy, impassioned letter “that would be almost comical were it not also touching,” he confesses, “I exceedingly fear my dangerous liability to enthusiasm, and I mean to guard against it with my mind in the future” (Rybczynski, 84).  Ultimately, this tour of England’s parks shaped Olmsted’s vision of landscape design (Foderaro).

Farm implement from Frederick Law Olmsted’s Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England. 1852. Contributed in BHL from the University of California Libraries.

Olmsted’s ideals and principles regarding nature and its benefits for the human condition were similarly applied in his plans for public lands, and he has been called “an early and important activist in the conservation movement” (Wikipedia). By the time he was tasked with creating Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865 for the U.S. Government, Olmsted, at age 43, had moved through four distinct periods of his professional career, all of which held in common, “His personal quest for fulfillment…characterized by immersion in some endeavor to which he devoted himself completely so long as he deemed it to be in the best interest of the nation” (Fein, 15).

As Victoria Post Ranney writes in the introduction to Olmsted’s report, “Olmsted saw the Yosemite region when it was new to all but Native Americans…and his description of its landscape gives us a standard by which to gauge its health today” (xx). The United States Government granted the State of California the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove on 30 June 1864, stipulating, “’the State shall accept this grant upon the expressed condition that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation, and shall be inalienable for all time.’ The valley and grove were to be administered by the governor through a group of commissioners appointed by him, and Olmsted acted as first President of the Commission” (Fein, 39).

Though his report of 1865 was adopted by the commission, due to costs identified by Olmsted, it wouldn’t be until 1890 that Yosemite became a national park. (Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, was the very first.) Olmsted’s report was suppressed, never to be submitted to the legislature (Ranney, xix).

Costs to establish Yosemite National Park prepared by Olmsted as part of his preliminary report. “Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865.”

In the intervening years between his report and Yosemite’s official establishment as a national park, Olmsted moved on to many other projects, including his collaboration with Daniel Burnham to adapt his initial design for the South Park Commission site — now known as Jackson Park, Washington Park and the Midway Plaisance — for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

Government Building and Wooded Island. Large photographic print from The White City (As It Was), photographs by William Henry Jackson. World’s Columbian Exposition 1893. Digital Identifier: GN90799d_JWH_019w. World’s Columbian Exposition Collection at The Field Museum.

As the Chicago Architecture Foundation features on its website, “Now, Olmsted’s vision is the talk of the town again, as discussions continue regarding the design and construction of the new Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. Michael Van Valkenburgh, who is leading the project’s landscape architecture, says he believes the center will provide an opportunity to bring the park into the 21st century, while restoring some of Olmsted’s plans.”

Whether a national park, city boulevard, or planned community, Frederick Law Olmsted was a visionary whose plans continue to expand, inform, and delight for the enjoyment of one and all.

References

Chicago Architecture Foundation. “Frederick Law Olmsted.” Accessed March 9, 2020. http://www.architecture.org/learn/resources/architecture-dictionary/entry/frederick-law-olmsted/

Fein, Albert. Frederick Law Olmsted and the American Environmental Tradition.

Foderaro, Lisa. “The Parks that Made the Man Who Made Central Park.” New York Times, October 30, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/travel/footsteps-frederick-law-olmsted-parks.html

Gopnik, Adam. “The Hero of Central Park.” The New Yorker, March 24, 1997. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/03/31/olmsteds-trip

Olmsted, Frederick Law. 1888. “Editorial: Foreign Plants and American Scenery” Arnoldia v. 60 (2000): 22-24.

Olmsted, Frederick Law; introduction by Victoria Post Ranney. 1995. “Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865.” Yosemite National Park, California, Association: Yosemite Association.

Ranney, Victoria Post. 1998. Olmsted in Chicago. Chicago: Field Museum.

Runte, Alfred. 2010. National Parks: The American Experience. Lanham, Maryland : Taylor Trade Publishing.

Rybczynksi, Witold. 2013. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century. New York: Scribner.

Wikipedia. 2020. “Frederick Law Olmsted.” Accessed March 9, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

Plate 122. Pratt, Anne. The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, & Ferns of Great Britain and Their Allies, the Club Mosses, Horsetails, etc. Volume 2. 1905. Contributed in BHL by The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden.

During the Victorian era, many gifted women participated in what has been called the “Golden Age of botanical art,” reflecting both a surge in gardening interests across English society, as well advances in book-making technology (Burns, Kramer). Though virtually unknown today, Anne Pratt (1806-1893) was one of the most prolific and popular artists and writers of this time, ultimately producing twenty published works that were loved for their handsome and accurate illustrations, and helping to create interest in flower study in the general public.

Born in 1806 in Strood, Kent, Pratt was the second of three daughters to Robert Pratt, a successful wholesale grocer, and Sara Bundock, who helped instill a love of gardening, plants and flowers in her daughter (Kramer). Due to poor health, Pratt was often confined indoors, where drawing became a favorite pastime (Wikipedia). A friend of the family, Dr. Dodds, introduced her to botany, a subject in which women were encouraged to participate and considered particularly well suited – collecting, illustrating, decoupage, and writing were all acceptable activities during a time when society imposed more restrictions than not (Burns).

Unmarried until the age of sixty, it is likely that Pratt’s only source of income was her botanical writing and illustrations (Burns). Pratt became a household name with Wild Flowers of the Year, issued in 1852-1853; after seeking her permission, she dedicated the book to Queen Victoria, who praised it and requested copies of all of Pratt’s works as a result (Burns). Pratt’s The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Great Britain is credited with generating a lot of interest in the general public in British flora by combining “easily digested science with miscellaneous romantic flower-lore” (Blunt & Stearn). Originally five volumes covering the entire British flora, a sixth supplemental volume The British Grasses, Sedges, Ferns and their Allies the Club Mosses, Pepperworts, and Horsetails was published in 1873. Pratt begins volume one telling her readers that “one of the chief objects is to aid those who have not hitherto studied Botany,” and she briefly compares the Linnaean system of classification with various natural systems currently in vogue (Burns).

Plate 102. Pratt, Anne. The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, & Ferns of Great Britain and Their Allies, the Club Mosses, Horsetails, etc. Volume 2. 1905. Contributed in BHL by The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden.

Flowering Plants… also employed a new method for mass market book printing called the Baxter method. Patented by George Baxter in 1835, it “combined the two processes of intaglio and relief” and a “relatively cheap color printing process for the mass market” (Burns). Acknowledged as a landmark book in many ways with far reaching influence: “…this work had a remarkably long life as a standard reference work: the illustrations of ferns in the final volume continued to be used into the second half of the twentieth century” (Wikipedia). There are also numerous references to the use of plants for medicinal purposes as well as folkloric information, e.g. that of Tamarisk (Támarix), “thought to improve the flavour of ale; the spit made of its wood imparted an excellence to the meat roasted upon it; and its use was considered so beneficial to persons afflicted with diseases of the spleen, that physicians ordered patients to eat from dishes made of Tamarisk wood” (Pratt). Tamarisk is also mentioned in classic literature: “Homer mentions it as the tree against which Achilles laid his spear before he rushed into Xanthus to pursue the fleeing Trojans.” (Pratt)

So plunged in Xanthus, by Achilles’ force,
Roars the resounding surge with men and horse;
His bloody lance the hero cast aside,
Which spreading Tamarisks on the margin hide.

English tamarisk (4) with assorted other plants. Pratt, Anne. The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, & Ferns of Great Britain and Their Allies, the Club Mosses, Horsetails, etc. Volume 2. 1905. Contributed in BHL by The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden.

Though she is generally lauded for her artistry, Pratt has been criticized for lacking scientific credentials and it’s been debated whether or not she may be considered a true botanist (Kramer). And, in some cases her illustrations have also been criticized; the illustrations for The Flowering Plants, for example: “are pleasantly composed, though owing to the limitations of the newly popular technique of chromolithography, not always very accurate in colour…the drawings which illustrate her book are her own work, though in their published form no doubt owe a good deal to the artists of the firm W. Dickes and co. who redrew them on stones” (Blunt & Stearn).

As was typical for the Victorian era, Pratt downplayed her own work, such as in the opening of Flowers and Their Associations (1840) with the “hopes these pages may not be unacceptable” (Kramer). Though considered a “suitable ladylike pursuit” in the eighteenth century, the field of botany was also changing, “Botany, like other natural history avocations, was in the process of professionalization and was dominated by men” (Lindsay).

Ultimately, Pratt was read by a wide audience, with the ability to “blend botany with the romance of nature–and thus fulfill two marketing niches–the demand for nature writing and flowers and the need for botanical knowledge for ladies” (Kramer). Regardless of any controversy over her credentials, most importantly Pratt’s books were appreciated on multiple levels, and reviving interest in Pratt’s substantial body of work is an important example of the BHL’s ongoing endeavor to preserve biodiversity literature and bring to light forgotten authors and illustrators.

References

Blunt, Wilfrid, and William T. Stearn. 1994. The Art of Botanical Illustration. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Burns, Mary. 2017. “Printing and Publishing the Illustrated Botanical Book in Nineteenth Century Great Britain.” Cogent Arts & Humanities 4: 1364058.

Lindsay, Debra. 2018. Maria Martin’s world: Art & Science, Faith & Family in Audubon’s America.

Pratt, Anne, and Edward Step. 1905. The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, & Ferns of Great Britain and Their Allies, the Club Mosses, Horsetails, etc. London: F. Warne.

Shteir, Ann B. 1996. Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England 1760 to 1860.

Walpole, Josephine. 2006. A History and Dictionary of British Flower Painters, 1650-1950. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club.

Wikipedia, “Anne Pratt,” accessed March 12, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Pratt.

Plate 31: Le Cotinga pacapaca, male. Le Vaillant, François. Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes. 1801. Digitized by The Field Museum of Natural History Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47511750. Description on pages 66-69.

In honor of the first Olympics to take place in Brazil, we are highlighting a book contributed by The Field Museum featuring birds of South America, Le Vaillant’s Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes (1801). Among several titles chosen for digitization from the Field Museum Library’s impressive Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library, housed in the collections of the Mary W. Runnells Rare Book Room, the entry for the volume in Catalogue of the Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library characterizes it as “a work intended to supplement his Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux d’Afrique (q.v.) by describing and figuring birds not properly included in that work.”

Published in eight parts, Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes was available as a folio with both colored and uncolored plates; large quarto with colored plates only; and quarto, with uncolored plates only. Originally 240 plates were proposed, but ultimately only 49 were produced of species of Bucerotidae from Malay Archipelago and Cotingidae from South America. The Field Museum’s copy is a folio with both colored and uncolored plates.

Plate 37, color: Le Continga ouette, male. Le Vaillant, François. Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes. 1801. Digitized by The Field Museum of Natural History Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47511812. Descriptions on pages 81-83.

Plate 38, uncolored: Le Continga ouette, male. Le Vaillant, François. Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes. 1801. Digitized by The Field Museum of Natural History Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47511816. Description on pages 81-83.

Born to French naturalists in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (Suriname), François Le Vaillant (1753-1824) began collecting bird specimens and building his own “cabinet” (or collection of specimens) before the age of ten. The family returned to France in 1763, where Le Vaillant would eventually make connections with ornithologists, collectors, and patrons who would become supporters of his work.

Le Vaillant was one of the first naturalists to independently embark on long voyages to study subjects in the wild. Previous naturalists had generally conducted such fieldwork as part of larger scientific expeditions. Not an illustrator in his own right, Le Vaillant relied on renowned artist Jacques Barraband (1768-1890) and emerging technologies of the day to produce his books. As authors Sitwell and Buchanan point out: “One interesting and sometimes confusing point is that some famous books are known by the author’s name and not the artist. Le Vaillant…whose name appears on most of the great French bird books of that same period, was a naturalist who travelled far, but never drew any of the pictures for his books…”

Barraband painted the birds that Le Vaillant secured on his voyages in watercolors, which were then assembled using an “elaborate mixture of processes – engraving, etching, colour printing and hand-finishing” (Lambourne). Le Vaillant was fortunate in that Napoléon Bonaparte had imitated a policy of Louis XIV to create a series of publications that were then “sent as presents to crowned heads, men of science, and learned bodies, in evidence of the splendours of the Empire…in this manner many glorious books came into being…The works of Le Vaillant owe their sumptuous character to the same impetus” (Sitwell and Buchanan).

Le Vaillant’s travel memoirs contributed as much to his fame in his lifetime as his illustrated bird books: due to its popularity, Travels into the interior parts of Africa : by the way of the Cape of Good Hope in the years 1780, 8l, 82, 83, 84, and 85 (contributed by Smithsonian Libraries) was translated into English and German. Feeling pressured to write a sequel, New travels into the interior parts of Africa : by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, in the years 1783, 84 and 85 (also contributed by Smithsonian Libraries), contains “an entirely fabricated account of a journey from the Orange River to the Tropic of Capricorn,” though this was not discovered until after his death (Pasquier and Farrand). Ultimately, despite any embellishments, Le Vaillant will be remembered for having produced some of the finest bird books ever created.

Map, Foldout: Map of M. Le Vaillant’s Two Journies in the Southern Part of Africa. New travels into the interior parts of Africa : by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, in the years 1783, 84 and 85. Digitized by The Smithsonian Libraries. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47139301.

The images from Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes are available in BHL’s Flickr. Nearly all of them have been taxon tagged by volunteers with the scientific name of the species depicted, allowing you to easily determine the species in the image as well as search Flickr for one of the included species and find the image. Learn more about our citizen science Flickr tagging efforts.

Example of a taxon-tagged image from La Vaillant’s Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes in BHL’s Flickr.

References: 

• Elphick, Jonathan. (2004). Birds. London: Scriptum Editions.
• Lambourne, Maureen. (1990). The Art of Bird Illustration. London: Collins.
• Martin, H. Bradley. (1989). The Library of H. Bradley Martin : Magnificent Color-Plate Ornithology. Sotheby’s Catalogue of Sale. New York, NY: Sotheby’s.
• Pasquier, Roger F. and John Farrand. (1991). Masterpieces of Bird Art: 700 Years of Ornithological Illustration. New York: Abbeville Press.
• Sitwell, Sacheverell, Handasyde Buchanan, and James Fisher. (1990). Fine Bird Books: 1700-1900. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
• Stresemann, Erwin and G. William Cottrell. (1975). Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.