A version of this post was originally published on the Cogapp blog on 30 March 2021.

AI generated illustrations of birds created with illustrations from the BHL Flickr using machine learning with a StyleGAN.

I work as a web developer for the agency Cogapp, which is based in Brighton, UK. We create websites and other digital services for museums, art galleries, archives and the like, but every couple of months we hold a “hack day.” A hack day involves spending a day working on projects which generally revolve around a particular theme and which ideally we can do in one day. This allows us to get the creative juices flowing and to further our agenda of innovation.

The theme this past hack day at Cogapp was “Museum APIs,” but the looser interpretation was that we were to use open data provided by museums in our projects. I was inspired by the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s Flickr, which is a massive collection of free-to-use scientific images. I immediately knew I wanted to utilise this resource as I love scientific illustrations of nature.

I’ve also had an interest in Machine Learning (ML) for a while, and I recently discovered Derrick Schultz and his YouTube channel Artificial Images. Here, he publishes videos of his Machine Learning courses which he runs for people who want to use ML for creative purposes.

I watched Derrick’s tutorials on training a StyleGAN Neural Network and the things he was saying made a degree of sense to me, plus he had published a handy Google Colab notebook with step-by-step code, so I decided it was something I might be able to have a go at.

What is a StyleGAN?

StyleGAN stands for Style Generative Adversarial Network and was originally developed by NVLabs. The purpose of a StyleGAN is to train and learn from input images and produce its own “fake” images back. You may have seen the site ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, which features fake photos of people which a StyleGAN has produced. This network has been trained on thousands of images of people’s faces and has in turn learned to produce new images which (for the most part) look like real photographs of people’s faces.

Three images from ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com; two successful, one less so…

A StyleGAN does this by processing through the set of real images it is given numerous times during which it also produces its own images. The “adversarial” part of the name refers to the fact that a StyleGAN actually comprises two Neural Networks which work against each other. The first network produces the fake images and the second will look at those images and try to determine whether it thinks they are “real” images or “fake.” The longer each network trains, the better each gets at its job, and the more likely the images produced will trick the second network and ultimately also humans into thinking they’re real.

StyleGAN has been updated a few times and in 2020 StyleGAN2-ADA was released, which now allows us to train a network on very few images, actually as few as 500–1000 as opposed to 10,000s just a couple of years ago, and it will learn to produce good quality fakes in a very short period of time (a few hours of training). This advancement allowed me to feel like I could attempt to train my own, as 1000 images was something I could get and I felt like I could train the model during the course of a hack day and get some kind of result to show at the end.

Creating the dataset

The biggest (active) part of this project time-wise was collecting the images and making them look roughly uniform by cropping them to the same size and having the subject roughly in the same spot in each one. This was important as when training this model I wanted the network to focus on the subject of the image itself and not, for example, where in the image the subject was, as that would waste precious training time.

I looked through the BHL Flickr and decided to use scientific illustrations of birds. I love birds and the style of scientific illustrations, and I was excited at the idea of the new and weird birds my StyleGAN model might produce! I chose illustrations in which the bird was in the centre of the page and the rest of the space was ideally empty. Due to time constraints, I did allow some illustrations with more than one bird in them and some with background features such as grass. This wasn’t ideal for the above reasons, but I decided to give it a go and see what the results would be like anyway.

A contact sheet of “reals” or real images taken from my dataset from the BHL Flickr. This is produced by the StyleGAN at the beginning of training.

Training my model

Once I had my dataset ready to go, I used Derrick’s Google Colab notebook to train my model. In order to run StyleGAN2-ADA, you need “1–8 high-end NVIDIA GPUs with at least 12 GB of GPU memory,” which is more memory than most home computers have, so using something like Google Colab where you’re essentially borrowing their super powerful computers means that even an average joe like me can have a go at running memory-heavy code like this and it’s free for the basic version, which is enough for this purpose! The other benefit is that you can connect it to a Google Drive for storage. This was useful in my case because I needed to store 1000 images to train my model with, and the model outputs large images itself.

The code I was using was set to train a new StyleGAN model based off of one that had already been trained for many hours. A model in Machine Learning is essentially a file that has been trained to recognise patterns. Using a pre-trained model as a starting point like this is called transfer-learning, and it can drastically speed up the time it takes for your StyleGAN to learn from your images and start producing something which looks good. The model you’re using as a base for training a StyleGAN doesn’t have to be similar in subject matter to the images you will be training it with, and in this case I used the ffhq model by NVlabs, which is trained from a set of images of faces. This meant that when it started to train, it initially produced images which looked like a mixture of faces and my illustrations.

After each few iterations through the dataset, the model produced a 7 by 4 grid of sample images so I could see how it was getting on. The image below is the first sample image I got, which shows the original faces mixing with some features of my images!

Totally not terrifying image produced by the StyleGAN model after one of the first cycles of training.

As time went on, the shapes it was producing started looking more and more bird-like. By the end of the hack day, I had only managed to train my model for about 3–4 hours. But, by that time I was starting to see the faces disappear and bird features appear. Pretty impressive for just a few hours, but also still pretty abstract!

The fakes produced by the end of the hack day in around 3–4 hours of training.

I wanted to see whether the model could produce more recognisable bird images, so I continued to train it after the hack day ended and the images started to look better and better…

The fakes produced after about 3–4 hours more training.

I left the model training over the weekend and the fakes actually did start looking like they could be illustrations of birds in many cases! Below is the final set of sample images I produced with my model. I would guess I spent about 40 hours training to get to this point.

The final set of sample images generated by the StyleGAN after around 40 hours of training.

Okay, so there are a few images in there that maybe wouldn’t fool a human into thinking they were real illustrations of birds… ahem…

But the majority kind of do look like birds. I’m pretty sure if you didn’t know this was generated by a Neural Network you would have no trouble believing it was a real bird illustration.

It does maybe look overly happy for a bird though?

Here are a few more images produced which I think look very convincing.

AI generated illustrations of birds created with illustrations from the BHL Flickr using machine learning with a StyleGAN.

This is so impressive considering I only had 1000 images and it was around a couple of days worth of training!

Creating interpolation animations

While learning from the given dataset, a StyleGAN will look for patterns or “features” in the images and organise them into a multi-dimensional graph. This is called latent space.

When I talk about “features,” in the simplest terms I mean things like brown vs white feathers, for example. So, brown feathers might be point A in this space and white feathers is point B. If you move from point A to point B and produce images every so often in between, you would see the feathers turn from brown to white over time. This is called interpolation.

Using another of Derrick Schultz’s Google Colab notebooks, I generated a couple of videos of interpolations through my model. I used the “circular” interpolation which gives a nice “walk” through a few diverse points in the latent space and you see different birds morph into one another. Here is one of the outcomes:

As it “walks” through the latent space, different features morph from one to another.

Conclusion

The fact that with StyleGAN2-ADA you can use such a limited dataset and need so little time, and that you can use a free service like Google Colab to do the training and it still produces results like this is incredibly impressive and opens the word of Machine Learning and StyleGANs to many more people than previously. It is also very exciting to see and think about all of the creative, as well as practical, applications of this technology. Practical applications of GANs include: “image-to-image translation,” which might involve converting a photograph taken in the day time to night time for example, so as a sort of AI-led photoshop; being able to generate higher resolution versions of images; or even generating missing parts of an incomplete image.

I have to obviously shout out to Derrick Schultz for his Colab notebooks and tutorials which also helped lower the barrier. It meant that I was able to get training much quicker than I would have otherwise but the code is still there for me to learn from, amend and dissect. I encourage you to check out his YouTube channel if you’re interested in learning more about training StyleGANs. He also runs regular courses on Machine Learning for creative purposes and you can find out more about them on his website.

I also encourage you to have a look through the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s 250,000+ images on their Flickr. It’s an impressive and incredibly interesting collection of images from the natural world, organised into different categories. It’s the perfect place to find datasets to use in a StyleGAN model or just for inspiration!

I’m looking forward to using this technology with more datasets and seeing what new and weird flora, fauna and other images I might be able to create!

Michelle Marshall is an independent researcher and creator of Historical SciArt, a research initiative dedicated to women in historic scientific illustration. In this guest post, Marshall shares more about how BHL helps empower her research on women in science.

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In Fall 2014, I discovered the wonderful world of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. I serendipitously stumbled onto this natural history digital library through collaborations with the Smithsonian Transcription Center, and I joined a group of dedicated volunteers known as BHL citizen scientists, whose work includes researching and adding taxonomy to the scientific illustrations that BHL has uploaded to its account on Flickr.

Himalayan Monal, Lophophorus impejanus, illustrated by Elizabeth Gould. Source: A century of birds from the Himalaya Mountains. 1831. Authored by John Gould and illustrated by Elizabeth Gould. Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

As I started to add scientific and common names to these images, I became curious about the artists. I easily discovered Maria Sibylla Merian and Elizabeth Gould, two of the more famous women natural history illustrators, but it was not until I found Roberta McIntosh that I started to scratch the surface of the multitude of women involved in this area of science.

King ragworm, Alitta virens, illustrated by Roberta McIntosh. Source: A monograph of the British marine annelids. v.2, pt.2 (1910). Authored by William Carmichael McIntosh and illustrated by several artists including Roberta McIntosh. Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

Roberta McIntosh (1843-1869) was the sister of William McIntosh, author of the multivolume publication, Monograph of the British Marine Annelids. She collected annelid specimens along with her brother, and he encouraged her to create scientific illustrations of these specimens for his work. While browsing through the monograph’s images, I noticed that there were other artists’ signatures, including one for A.H.W. In the Preface of this monograph, W. McIntosh identifies “A.H.W.” as “Miss Ada Walker” and also identifies “Miss Burnet of St. Andrews”.  I have been able to identify more information about Ada H. Walker, but Miss Burnet remains a mystery to be illuminated.

Illustration of marine annelids by Roberta McIntosh and Ada Hill Walker. Source: A monograph of the British marine annelids. v.4, pt.1 (1922). Authored by William Carmichael McIntosh and illustrated by several artists including Roberta McIntosh and Ada Hill Walker. Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

The discovery of these three women turned a spark into a flame as I realized that there are so many women still to be brought to light in this combined area of science, art, and history research. A few weeks later, I stumbled across Christine Jurine, a French artist who illustrated marine invertebrates and insects, and in the years that have passed, I have uncovered more and more. Cecile Pfulb Kastner is an accomplished French botanical illustrator, and I have written about my research into Kastner on my blog. And then there’s the sublime botanical art of Louise Cécile Descamps Sabouret for Revue Horticole.

Epiphyllum cactus, illustrated by Louise Cécile Descamps Sabouret. Source: Revue horticole. 1898. Contributed in BHL from Harvard University Botany Libraries.

BHL’s digital library is a gold mine of information for discovering more about these women. With the addition of full text searching, I have been able to locate details about these women, including their names, work, other publications, and collaborators. Matching up artists’ signatures with works in BHL has also led to further linking of these women across publications.

Additionally, BHL has actively supported me in making these women more visible. On countless occasions, I have collaborated with BHL staff and their partners to add these women to the BHL catalog by establishing “Creator IDs”. This designation allows other publications affiliated with this woman to be part of one hyperlink within the collection of BHL. This ID also provides “notability” to meet the criteria for inclusion in crowdsourced platforms like Wikidata, where other researchers can discover these women.

I was also pleased to collaborate with BHL and their partners for the #HerNaturalHistory campaign for Women’s History Month in 2019. Through this collaboration, many other researchers have become involved in this area through Wikipedia, and BHL has created the “Women in Natural History” collection of materials showcasing the profound and extensive work that women have done in the biodiversity sciences. These efforts continue to evolve and be updated as more information is uncovered.

Various fungi illustrated by Mary K. Spittal. Source: Fungi and how to know them. 1909. Authored by Ernest W. Swanton and illustrated by Mary K. Spittal. Contributed in BHL from University of Toronto – Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Through a recent encounter with the Mycological Book Club on Twitter, I was able to collaborate with other researchers to discover the full name and details of Mary Kerr Spittal. In response to tweets in which I posted illustrations done by women in mycology, Clare Blencowe of the Mycological Book Club shared with me an illustration by a not fully identified woman mycologist using the name M. Spittal. Through full text searching in BHL, I was able to find her name as “Mary K. Spittal”, as well as another publication in which she produced scientific illustrations. At this point, I enlisted the help of my long-time collaborator, Siobhan Leachman. Leachman created a Wikidata item for Spittal and also delved into more resources to discover her history. I also enlisted the help of my mother, Shelby Marshall, who is an experienced genealogy researcher. Over the next few hours, Blencowe, Leachman, Marshall, and I created a detailed picture of Mary Kerr Spittal. The next day, Chris Robson, Catalog Librarian at Harvard University Botany Libraries and a member of the BHL Cataloging Committee, responded to my BHL feedback request for a Creator ID for Spittal, linking her name to her works in BHL. Additionally, Madeline Byrne of the BHL Flickr Group responded to my request to upload Spittal’s works to Flickr, where they have been tagged by artist name to further expand the discoverability of Spittal’s artistic contributions to science. This successful collaboration brought to light another remarkable and notable woman involved in the natural history of mycology.

Yesterday I posted about M. K. Spittal, saying I couldn’t find anything about her.

Today, thanks to the power of Twitter and some spontaneous collaboration with @HistSciArt, @SiobhanLeachman & @BioDivLibrary, she has her own wikidata entry ▶️https://t.co/ysuqB0x7QW https://t.co/ZsmRGLHI1C

— The Mycological Book Club (@MycoBookClub) February 12, 2021

For the past four years, I have been fortunate to find more of these women through my individual research and collaborations with so many others. I created the spreadsheet “Women in Historical SciArt” to share my research and to promote further research into the work and lives of these remarkable women. These experiences have enriched my life beyond measure, and my goal is to continue expanding access and knowledge about the contributions of these early women scientists and illustrators.

Without BHL, I would never have discovered these inspiring women in science and their work. I am incredibly grateful to BHL for all the support and encouragement of this research, and their continued updates to their digital library and Flickr collection, which support my ongoing work.

The pineapple, indigenous to South America and domesticated and harvested there for centuries, was a late comer to Europe. The fruit followed in its cultivation behind the tomato, corn, potato, and other New World imports. Delicious but challenging and expensive to nurture in chilly climes and irresistible to artists and travelers for its curious structure, the pineapple came to represent many things. For Europeans, it was first a symbol of exoticism, power, and wealth, but it was also an emblem of colonialism, weighted with connections to plantation slavery.

Originating from the region around the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers (present-day Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina), the pineapple was an important economic plant in the development of Indigenous civilizations in the Americas. The Tupi-Guarani and Carib peoples called the fruit, a staple crop, nanas (“excellent fruit”) and several varieties were grown. As well as food, the pineapple was a source of medicine, fermented to become alcohol, its fibers made into robes and bow strings and thread for cloth.

The Aztec word for pineapple is matzatli as seen here is Francisco Hernández’s, Nova Plantarum, Animalium et Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia (1651). The Mayans also cultivated the plant. Volume contributed in BHL from the John Carter Brown Library.

From South America, the cultivated pineapple spread to Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Christopher Columbus encountered the pineapple (Ananas comosus, of the extensive bromeliad family) in the West Indies on the island he named Guadeloupe in November 1493.

Columbus may have brought one back successfully to Spain, although pineapples tended to rot on the long return voyages across the Atlantic. He called it piña de Indes (“little pine of the Indians”) for its resemblance to the pinecone and declared it “the most delicious fruit in the world.” For the Spanish-Italian historian Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, not unreasonably, the pineapple resembled the artichoke. This author of De Orbe Novo (On the New World, 1530) found it “not unworthy of a king’s table.” The early European explorers and colonizers were enamored with it, often praising the pineapple in their chronicles of their voyages. The first identified published illustration of the pineapple is in the historian Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias of 1535, where it is again connected with royalty as “the prince of all fruits.”

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés‘ Historia General de las Indias, folio lxxvi (verso) woodcut illustration (Seville, 1535). The author was a keen chronicler of what was new from the New World to Europe. Volume contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

The pineapple became a treasured possession in Europe, but it was of practical use for sailors in tropical regions, who were vulnerable to developing scurvy from a lack of vitamin C during long voyages. They observed the healthful effects of eating pineapple, even though the connection between the devastating disease and diet deficiencies was not yet scientifically understood. The Portuguese introduced the fruit (that they called abaxaci) to their colonies in Africa, India, and perhaps other parts of Asia in the mid-sixteenth century. For Tamil-speaking peoples, pineapples were known as annachi pazham.

It was much later that the intriguing tropical fruit was able to be grown in cold climates with the development, at huge costs, of glass houses and their reliable heating systems to warm the air and soil continuously. The fruit needed a controlled environment, run by complex mechanisms and skilled care, to thrive in Europe. Pineapples, thus, became a class or status symbol, a luxury available only to royalty and aristocrats. The fruit appeared as a centerpiece on lavish tables, not to be eaten but admired, and was sometimes even rented for an evening.

The pineapple was also a symbol of colonialism, one of the trophies brought back from conquered territories.

The pineapple can be said to first appear in England by way of the printed title page of John Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris (Park-in-Sun’s Terrestrial Paradise) of 1629. In its representation of the Garden of Eden, the fruit takes prime spot in between the valuable and wildly fashionable tulips. This may be a symbol of temptation for Adam, as there was also an erotic, seductive association in contrast to the staid, old apple. The pineapple was the fruit of the new Eden, the New World. In his Theatrum Botanicum of 1640, the botanist Parkinson provided a description:

“Scaly like an Artichoke at the first view, but more like to a cone of the Pine tree, which we call a pineapple for the forme … being so sweete in smell … tasting … as if Wine, Rosewater and Sugar were mixed together.”

Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers (London, 1629). Volume contributed in BHL from the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute.

Richard Ligon, part-owner of a sugar plantation run with enslaved labor, in his A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657), was fascinated with the pineapple he found there:

“When this fruit is grown to a likeness, you shall perceive it by the smell, which is far beyond the smell of our choicest fruits of Europe, as the taste is beyond theirs.”

The kitchen gardens of Caribbean plantations grew pineapples to supply the white households. Ligon tried to import plants back to England, but they did not survive the voyage. Since Columbus, Jamaica had been a possession of Spain, but the British Navy seized the island in 1655. Hans Sloan in his Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (1707-1725) reported:

“The Fruit is planted and us’d by way of desert (having a very fine flavor and tast[e]) all over the hot West-Indies, either raw or, when not yet ripe, candied, and is accounted the most delicious Fruit these places, or the World affords … The slices are soaked in Canary [a sweet wine] to take the sharpness which commonly otherwise inflames the Throat, and then they are eaten.”

A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, by Richard Ligon (London, 1657). Volume contributed in BHL from the John Carter Brown Library.

In the 1680s, Pieter de la Court, with the help of his gardener, Willem de Vink, attempted to cultivate the tropical plant at an estate near Leiden, and this effort is sometimes credited with being the first for growing one in Europe. But it was the remarkable woman, botanist, collector, and patron Agneta Block who achieved the first success with fruiting the pineapple from a slip. This took place in 1687 in a hothouse at her country house, Vijverhof, located between Amsterdam and Utrecht.

The pineapple can be viewed as an early example of a global commodity. And of slavery with the unfathomable number of enslaved Africans brought to the New World. The Dutch had started exporting the fruit to the Netherlands and Surinam, their colony in Guianas. A ship’s captain first managed to transport the plant to the botanical gardens of Amsterdam and Leiden in 1680. Surinam became wealthy in trading humans and was marked by its brutal plantations. Cash crops grown in the Americas for trade—sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, rice, for example—relied on enslaved labor as well as local expertise. In two successive plates of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, the famed naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian gave prominence to the fruit. She had sailed to Dutch Surinam in 1699 to study tropical insects. There, for two years, she relied on enslaved African and Indigenous peoples as guides, household help, and sources for botanical information.

“Pineapple with Cockroaches,” the first plate in Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian (Amsterdam, 1705). In the author’s portrayal of insects of Suriname. Volume contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

“Ripe Pineapple with Dido Longwing Butterfly” in Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Maria Sibylla Merian described Ananas comosus as producing “the most outstanding of all edible fruits.”Volume contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

It was in a German book solely devoted to citrus fruits that the pineapple was illustrated in a manner reflecting its exalted position as symbol of social status and refined collecting. Johann Christoph Volkamer’s Nürnbergische Hesperides (The Garden of Hesperides at Nuremberg) contains wonderfully inspired, dreamlike images from the author’s garden ‘Gostenhof’ and its orangeries. Untethered, fruits float above various etched scenes of elaborate gardens of the Alps and Italy, country landscapes, villas, and seaports. There are five uncolored, double-size plates of pineapple, the “Queen of Fruits,” elements of which show the artist’s debt to Merian and her scientific observations (one almost a mirrored image). However, the Nürnbergische Hesperides is very much of the world of the merchant Volkamer, one of the few of the time who had the means and interests to both nurture exotic fruits and undertake such an opulent publication, a more lasting testament to the aristocrat’s cultivation and refinement.

The pineapple plates of Nürnbergische Hesperides (1708-1714) appear in the second volume, Continuation, here with a hairy spider, a reference to Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Volume contributed in BHL from the Wellcome Library.

One of the imaginative pineapple plates from Nürnbergische Hesperides (volume two of 1714) above a bustling port scene with tall ships, suggesting its importation from foreign lands. Volume contributed in BHL from the Wellcome Library.

The pineapple became fashionable in England after the arrival in 1688 of the Dutch King, William III and Queen Mary, daughter of James II, who were keen horticulturalists and, not incidentally, accompanied by skilled gardeners from the Netherlands. Pineapples were soon grown at Hampton Court. The hothouses in Great Britain became known as pineries. With its distinctive form, the cult of the pineapple extended to architecture and art. Carved representations sit atop the towers of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and other prominent buildings, perhaps an adaptation or reference to the pinecones used on ancient Roman buildings.

Most famously, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore in Scotland, had a stone-carved pineapple sitting atop his folly or summerhouse perhaps around 1761. The reason for that massive construction is unknown (although certainly boastful), as is the architect. The fruit had been grown in Scotland since 1732. The hapless, diplomatically inept Dunmore was the last Colonial Governor of Virginia and in that colony’s capital, Williamsburg, the pineapple had also become fashionable and a common motif in decorative arts. It was there that Dunmore incurred the wrath of George Washington in 1775 by proposing to arm his own 56 enslaved people as well to grant freedom to Black Loyalists.

During the 18th century, the pineapple was established as a symbol of hospitality, with its prickly, tufted shape incorporated in gateposts, door entryways and finials and in silverware and ceramics. The motif continues, prevalent in Christmas decorations in Williamsburg today. But with pride of place on the lavish dining tables of enslavers in North America, the pineapple continued its association with slavery. George Washington, who first encountered the pineapple at the plantations of Barbados, had them imported from the West Indies, a port in the triangular trade of enslaved Africans.

The 37-foot-high Dunmore Pineapple, the north front, showing the entrance (photograph by Keith Salvesen from geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons).

With technological developments in growing and preserving throughout the wealthy 18th century, the tropical fruit, once an expensive novelty, became a more common commodity in Europe. Helping to make the pineapple more accessible by describing cultivation methods in Great Britain were the writings of Richard Bradley, Philip Miller and William Speechly. The Reverend William Smith in A Natural History of Nevis and the Rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America (1745) declared:

“Ananas, or Pine-Apples, are so common at Chelsea and other fine Gardens here in England, that they need no description, and I shall refer you to Laurence Miller, Sir Hans Sloane, and other books that treat of Gardening.”

Returning to the thought of the pineapple as a symbol of globalization, the Spanish had brought the pineapple to Hawaii sometime by the late 18th to early 19th century. The first commercial crop enterprise was established there in 1886 and others soon followed, often settling on land stolen from the Hawaiian people. A plantation system was developed, exploiting workers, both Indigenous and imported. With cheap labor and new canning technology, Hawaii quickly became the dominant market for pineapples in the world. With extensive advertising, the fruit evolved into a cliche of the Islands. But the big agricultural companies began moving their operations out of Hawaii to Asia and Central America for cheaper land, transportation, and labor in the 1970s. The pineapple’s reign as an economically important and popular fruit throughout the world was firmly in place.

The vast literature of accounts of the pineapple by travelers, explorers, plant enthusiasts, those in the plant and nursery trade, and gardeners— so taken with the distinctive plant— can be found and further studied in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The pineapple’s distribution throughout the world is told in so many works, reflecting a range of histories— botanical, horticultural, historical, cultural, economic, architectural, and art— in a single tropical fruit. There is much for plant scholars, scientists, historians, artists, and others to discover in the digitized works, tracing the biodiversity and meaning of the pineapple. It still evokes a balmy, tropical paradise and the wondrous beauty of the natural world. As the 17^th-century Dutch businessman Pieter de la Court declared, “One can never be tire’d with looking at it.”

Hand-colored engraving by Johann Jacob Haid after Georg Dionysius Ehret. Plantae Selectae Quarum Imagines ad Exemplaria Naturalia Londini, in Hortis Curiosorum Nutrita. (Nuremberg, 1750-1773). Volume contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

Further Reading

For more in-depth information of the pineapple, a few of the works in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ collections:

The pineapple: botany, production and uses, edited by D.P. Bartholomew, R.E. Paull, and K.G. Rohrbach. c. 2003 (link)

Pineapple culture: a history of the tropical and temperate zones, by Gary Y. Okihiro, c. 2009 (link)

Fifty plants that changed the course of history, by Bill Laws. 2010 (link)

Pineapple: a global history, by Kaori O’Connor. 2013 (link)

For further reading on the history of pineapple production: Jesse Rhodes, “It’s Pineapple Season, But Does Your Fruit come from Hawaii?” Smithsonian Magazine (link)

Biodiversity (2020), a collaged art installation by Clare Börsch. The installation uses illustrations and photographs sourced mainly from open access collections like the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by Patricia Schichl.

Imagine stepping into a world teeming with dazzling biodiversity. Everywhere you turn, colorful birds perch amidst exotic blooms, glimmering butterflies and energetic hummingbirds flit from flower to flower, shimmering serpents wind their way through a jungle of foliage, and an array of mushrooms add color and dimension to the forest floor.

This world, seemingly alive with biodiversity, is composed not of flesh and blood, but of ink and paper. It is a world brought to life from the imagination of Berlin-based American artist Clare Börsch using illustrations and photographs sourced mainly from open access collections like the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and painstakingly cut and arranged into a marvelous, three-dimensional ecosystem. Within this Biodiversity installation of collaged nature art, a wondrous world awaits.

Close-up from the collaged art installation Biodiversity (2020) by Clare Börsch. Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Patricia Schichl.

Beneath this enchanting beauty, however, lies a graver message—a warning—for this installation is also a commentary on the biodiversity and climate crises facing our planet today.

“Humanity has wiped out 68% of all our planet’s biodiversity in just the last 50 years,” says Börsch within her video for the Biodiversity installation. “My latest artwork and video shares a message of love, urgency and hope. Love for our planet, our future selves, our children and future generations. Urgency, because climate change is upon us and the predictions of what to come are dire. And Hope, because there is still a narrow window of time to act and there is still so much we can save.”

Artist Clare Börsch building her collaged art installation, Biodiversity (2020). Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Patricia Schichl.

With a background in public policy, Börsch has been a full-time artist for the past three years. Having lived in Brazil, the United States, Italy, Honduras, Argentina and Germany, her personal experiences with nature are global and diverse. Installation collage art allows Börsch to bring together flora and fauna from around the world to create an environment that reflects this global perspective and immerses the viewer within this incredible diversity through the use of historic naturalist imagery. This same imagery can also be emblematic of the threats facing this biodiversity.

“As I use naturalist imagery from 1900 and earlier, many species in my artwork have already vanished or are vanishing,” shares Börsch in her artist statement. “This adds a layer of ecological urgency to my work.”

Collaged art installation in process. Installation by Clare Börsch incorporating imagery from BHL. Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Artist.

Much of the naturalist imagery Börsch uses for her installations is sourced from BHL. The BHL Flickr, which contains over 240,000 images extracted from publications and archival materials in the Library, allows her to easily browse and download high resolution materials for her own artworks.

“Discovering BHL has transformed the scale and complexity of my installations,” asserts Börsch. “The archive is an incredible resource and allows me to really execute and realize the ideas I have.”

Intimate Immensity installation by Clare Börsch incorporating imagery from BHL. Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Trevor Good.

Over the past year, as many of our partners have transitioned to a telework environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve focused on projects to improve our collections remotely—including building our image library on Flickr. Since March, we’ve uploaded over 75,000 new images to the BHL Flickr, all freely available for download and reuse. The growing collection offers an ever-expanding source of inspiration for everyone, including artists like Börsch, to explore.

Börsch takes full advantage of this wealth of imagery, using the BHL Flickr daily. She is especially appreciative of the curated collections, which facilitate discovery around particular topics. In the future, she’d love to see the images enhanced with more geographic information, allowing her to search for species by specific ecosystems, and information on each depicted species’ status, such as whether it is extinct or endangered.

Imagery from BHL has appeared in many of Börsch’s works, including her previous installation, The Mushroom Hunters, which created an immersive world inspired by Neil Gaiman’s poem of the same name.

The Mushroom Hunters, a collaged art installation by Clare Börsch that includes imagery from BHL. Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Kolja Raschke.

“I create immersive installations so that others can join me in being moved by the beauty of our planet,” asserts Börsch in the artist video for Biodiversity. “2020 has been hard, but I think the grief we feel is a symptom of our love, of an ecological awakening. Our grief reminds us that we are connected in our humanity, that one group’s suffering impacts us all, and that we are connected to our shared and finite home, our planet.”

BHL’s open access collections not only empower the work of scientists striving to study and conserve biodiversity, but they also allow everyone to explore the wonders of nature—to help develop a connection to our planet that galvanizes us to action. Artists like Börsch breathe new life into the work of naturalist artists from centuries past and allow us to experience the beauty they captured in new ways. This art—old and new—is a powerful reminder of what we have…and what we stand to lose.

Collaged art installation in process. Installation by Clare Börsch incorporating imagery from BHL. Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Christiane Meyer.

“In twenty years from now, I do not want my art to be a memorial for everything we could have saved,” asserts Börsch. “I rather want it to inspire change and action today.”

In keeping with this aspiration, within the artist video for Biodiversity, Börsch suggests actions that can have a positive impact on the environment, such as choosing greener transportation options and eating locally. Supporting organizations whose work empowers science and conservation, like the Biodiversity Heritage Library, is another way that you can make a difference today.

Our planet’s biodiversity is experiencing unprecedented declines, with at least one million species currently threatened with extinction [1], but there is still time to act. Together, we can build a better future for our planet and every species that calls it home, ensuring that Earth’s ecosystems remain as wondrous and diverse as those born from Börsch’s imagination.

Clare Börsch with her collaged art installation, Biodiversity (2020). Photo courtesy of Clare Börsch. Photo by: Patricia Schichl.

References

Peacock. A Natural History of Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and Insects (1845). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries. Downloaded from the BHL Flickr.

Art is an integral part of scientific investigation and documentation. Before the advent of photography, illustrations were used to capture the natural world and share it with broader audiences through reproduction via woodcuts, engravings and etchings, and lithography in natural history publications. Even today, scientific illustration is important, articulating morphological, physiological and anatomical features with more detail and clarity than can often be captured through photographs.

With more than five centuries of natural history literature, the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s open access collections include millions of scientific illustrations amongst the Library’s nearly 60 million pages. Since 2011, BHL partners have worked to upload many of these illustrations to Flickr. Recent publicity from a myraid of outlets including Colossal, My Modern Met, Open Culture, Atlas Obscura, Lifehacker, and Vice has generated wide public interest in BHL’s Flickr collections, which in 2020 included over 180,000 images freely available to browse, download, and reuse. The images are curated by volume and searchable by subject and, in many cases, scientific names thanks to tags added as part of our Flickr tagging citizen science project.

These illustrations are useful for communities in a wide range of disciplines. Our audiences have shared how they use these illustrations to support studies in the sciences, such as identifying the earliest observations on heterostyly in plants, researching the history of herbaria, and revisiting the legacy of women in science. Citizen scientists make use of these resources on platforms like Wikipedia and to research the identities of natural history artists.

Given that these illustrations are works of art, it’s not surprising that these collections are also providing a wealth of inspiration for artists like Dee Etzwiler, who recently used BHL images within nine pieces she created for a group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020.

Dee Etzwiler’s artworks incorporating BHL imagery, delivered for the group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020. Photo credit: D. Etzwiler on Instagram.

Photo by: Eric Merrow | @MerrowVisuals (www.merrowvisuals.com)

“As an artist, BHL offers a wealth of imagery for me to explore and discover,” affirms Etzwiler. “The images are abundant in number and are superb in beauty, diversity and quality.”

With a background in art and a master’s degree in architecture, Etzwiler combined her skills to found her own commercial art firm in 2012, where she works collaboratively with clients to create custom artworks. While most of her work is client driven, Conversations gave Etzwiler an opportunity to create a body of work driven by her own interests and influences.

It was while conducting image research in 2019 for these artworks that Etzwiler first discovered BHL.

“I had decided to create a number of pieces to represent different adjectives that describe conversations,” explains Etzwiler. “While conducting research, I discovered a scorpion image on the BHL Flickr that became central to one of my pieces. This was the first BHL image I started to seriously digitally manipulate, and the piece quickly developed into an exciting work. I decided that my entire body of work for the Conversations group show would revolve around BHL inspiring images.”

Scorpion image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library which Etzwiler incorporated into her artwork, ‘Stinging’ (2019). Plate CCLIII. Die Arachniden, Bd. 8-10 (1841-43). Contributed in BHL from the Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. Downloaded from the BHL Flickr.

‘Stinging’. Artwork by Dee Etzwiler for the group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020. © Etzwiler 2019. Reproduced with permission from D. Etzwiler.

When looking for BHL imagery to incorporate into her art, Etzwiler starts by conducting searches in the BHL Flickr by common name, scientific name, and other related words so that she can uncover a wide range of potential images with which to work. Once she selects an image, she downloads a full size file and imports it into a Photoshop file where she layers it with textures, images and colors to develop her artwork. Once completed, the art is commercially printed, making use of a variety of printing substrates — fine art paper, metal, acrylic, wood, canvas, fabric, and more.

‘Colorful’. Artwork by Dee Etzwiler for the group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020. © Etzwiler 2019. Reproduced with permission from D. Etzwiler.
  Incorporating artwork from BHL: Peacock. A Natural History of Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and Insects (1845). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries. Downloaded from the BHL Flickr.

BHL has made incorporating these historic illustrations into her own artworks extremely easy.

“I love how easily I can search the images in Flickr and how well the images are organized and displayed,” asserts Etzwiler. “I love that I can view images in greater detail and download them in a variety of sizes and resolutions. Having access to copyright information is very important, too. It was so much fun to create this body of work, and I am grateful that I committed to this idea.”

‘Valuable’. Artwork by Dee Etzwiler for the group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020. © Etzwiler 2019. Reproduced with permission from D. Etzwiler.
Incorporating artwork from BHL: Plate XXXVII. The Great Barrier Reef of Australia (1893). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries. Downloaded from the BHL Flickr.

Etzwiler enjoyed her experience working with BHL images so much, she intends to continue to use these collections in her pieces. In fact, this experience has had a deep impact on her artistic interests and the future direction of her work.

“My work with BHL’s images has greatly increased my interest in creating science-related art, which has now become a focus of my work as I move forward,” shares Etzwiler. “With the current coronavirus pandemic, I will be focused on this science-related work in my studio. I know that BHL assists those in the science community, but it has also made a big impact on my life as an artist and I am grateful.”

‘Long-Winded’. Artwork by Dee Etzwiler for the group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020. © Etzwiler 2019. Reproduced with permission from D. Etzwiler.
Incorporating artwork from BHL: Pl. 141. Ichthyologie, v. 1 Plate (1796). Contributed in BHL from the Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. Downloaded from the BHL Flickr.

BHL’s open access digital library portal allows anyone to freely access valuable literature and beautiful images from anywhere — even at home and when access to physical collections is not possible. We’re grateful to our global partners for making their collections freely available — empowering research, learning, and creativity, no matter where you are.

Thank you to Dee Etzwiler and others in our global community for letting us know how valuable and inspirational BHL’s collections are in so many ways and for so many people.

‘The Gathering’. A patchwork of pieces from the original 8 images created by Dee Etzwiler for the group show — Conversations: Reflections of 14 Women Artists — exhibited at the Maude Kerns Art Center (Eugene, OR) from 10 January – 7 February 2020. The original 8 pieces represent conversation types, so this large piece represents a hypothetical social gathering.
© Etzwiler 2019. Reproduced with permission from D. Etzwiler.

The Zoological Sketches are two volumes of 100 plates published between 1857 and 1867. They show particularly rare animals from Regent’s Park in London, which Joseph Wolf captured in watercolours and on the basis of which Joseph Smit made lithographs. The edited notes were written by David William Mitchell, Secretary of the Zoological Society. After his death his successor, Philip Lutley Sclater, took over the work and completed the volumes.

The Library of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin holds a copy of this title in its collection. There is a digital copy of the work in BHL, contributed by the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Copy of the Zoological Sketches by Joseph Wolf in the Holdings of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Photo: Carola Radtke | MfN.

Regent’s Park, now London Zoo, was founded in 1828 for the purpose of scientific observation of wild animals from all parts of the British Empire. “In the year 1852 the Council of the Zoological Society […] resolved to commence the formation of a series of original water-colour drawings […]. For this purpose the Council were fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. Joseph Wolf, who may be fairly said to stand alone in intimate knowledge of the habits and forms of Mammals and of Birds. …“(Preface).

Joseph Wolf was born on 22 January 1820 in Mörz (Germany). He was trained as a lithographer in Münster, but also mastered the work with pencil, water and oil paints, and coal. He worked in different places in Europe before coming to London in 1840 to work at the British Museum as an animal illustrator. By that time, he had already made a name for himself with his illustrations, especially of birds.  Sir Edwin Landseer described him as “… without exception, the best all-round animal painter that ever lived. …” (Palmer 1895, p. 283). The Zoological Society appointed Wolf as its resident artist in 1861.

Wolf, who until then only sketched animals in the wild, always dealt with the self-assertion of the individual and incorporated this into his works. The housing of the animals in the zoo in which they did not show their natural behaviour was therefore a challenge for him.

Animals that came to Regent’s Park in the 19th century often had a long, exhausting journey behind them. Wolf wrote “… for sometimes, when they arrived, they were in a miserable state, and hardly I knew what to make of them. I used to do two or three of these drawings in a day, if the material were good. All these were vignettes only; but I took care to get the true character of the animal” (Palmer 195, p. 110).

In addition to the embellished depictions of the individuals, most of the 100 plates show the zoo animals in an ideal, natural environment. A few, however, provide insights into zoo life and depict the animals in their enclosures or provide a view of the visitors. Although the animals are described anonymously by Mitchell and Sclater, the records of the Zoological Society allow us to deduce which individuals of Regent Park’s Wolf drew.

Illustration of the hippopotamus in the Zoological Sketches (Volume 1, Plate XXVII) by Joseph Wolf, here shown in the copy that is in the holdings of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Photo: Carola Radtke | MfN.

The hippopotamus bull Obaysh came to Regent’s Park as a calf on 25 May 1850 and quickly became a crowd puller. In 1854, he got a companion, Adhela. On plate XXVII (Part I) are two adult hippos, as well as a herd in the background, a mother with a calf and a western swamphen in a natural habitat. Since Joseph Wolf himself never visited Africa, he relied on third party sources for the design of the environment. For all the hippopotami depicted, especially the two individuals in the foreground, Obaysh and Adhela were probably models. Their names are not mentioned in the text and the representation of the right side of the body makes it impossible to identify Obaysh by a characteristic scar on his left side. As Obaysh and Adhela were the only hippos in the zoo, Wolf used different sketches of them for the herd to show different behaviours of the species.

Plate XXIV, Part 2. The Zoological Sketches. Art by Joseph Wolf. Lithographed by Joseph Smit. Contributed in BHL from the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

The situation is similar with plate XXIV, Part 2, where a herd of elephants shows up in a supposedly natural environment. Probably Jumbo, who came to Regent’s Park on 26 June 1865, and Alice were depicted. This plate makes it clear that Wolf’s depiction of zoo animals does not show their natural behaviour. The picture of the bull elephant together with the cow and a calf rather reflects the ideal of a Victorian family, as bull elephants are rouges. Furthermore, in African elephants, both females and males have tusks but the cow elephant shown here does not seem to have any. This can be explained by the fact that Alice was only 2 years old when Wolf made his sketches, and her tusks were apparently not yet fully developed.

Illustration and edited notes of the Syrian Bear in the Zoological Sketches (Volume 1, Plate XVII) by Joseph Wolf, here shown in the copy that is in the holdings of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Photo: Carola Radtke | MfN.

Plate XVII, Part 1 is one of the few that shows an animal in its zoo enclosure. The almost portrait-like drawing shows a Syrian Bear on straw in front of a board wall. It is not possible to take a closer look at the surroundings, e.g. to determine whether he lives together with other animals of the same species or to measure the dimensions of the enclosure.  By depicting the bear in its actual accommodation, Wolf focuses on the animal’s personality; the bear no longer remains anonymous. The accompanying text also mentions that the bear was a gift from the Persian Gulf and arrived in London in August 1851.

The discussed plates show a selection of the illustrations of the Zoological Sketches and set highlights on individual features that are characteristic for this work. Despite their idealization and partial embellishment, they remain true to their scientific purpose and are an outstanding example of 19th century European animal painting.

You can also explore all of the artworks from this title in the BHL Flickr: Volume One | Volume Two

Sources

Palmer, A. H. 1895. The life of Joseph Wolf,: animal painter. London: Longmans, Green.
Susset, Nicole Ricarda, and Nicole Ricarda Susset. 2013. Lebendigkeit im Bild: Joseph Wolf und die Tiermalerei im 19. Jahrhundert.
Schulze-Hagen, Karl, and Joseph Wolf. 2000. Joseph Wolf (1820-1899), Tiermaler. Marburg an der Lahn: Basilisken-Presse.

Plate 18. Mathews, Gregory M. (Gregory Macalister). The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Art by Henrik Grönvold. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Recently, we spent three weeks on student placement at Museums Victoria Library and were fortunate enough to be involved with the digitisation of the beautiful title The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant by Gregory M. Mathews. It was an eye-opening experience, making us aware of the patience and attention to detail that is a necessity for book digitisation.

In order to get suitably high resolution scans, a Zeutschel OS 16000 scanner is primarily used for Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) digitisations at Museums Victoria. The Australian branch of the project, BHL Australia, digitises the collections of 25 organisations across the country. It is hosted by Museums Victoria and funded by the Atlas of Living Australia.

As this title was rare, it was essential to handle it gently, and to protect the spine from excessive pressure. To ensure minimal impact, we wore gloves when in contact with the book, and scanned one page at a time. We scanned all right-hand pages first, before turning the book around and repeating the process for the left-hand pages. The glass pane normally used to pin pages down on ordinary books can’t be used on rare books, so getting pages to lie flat was a challenge in itself! This digitisation project has given us a chance to see a lot of this beautiful title, with its multitude of breathtaking illustrations.

Marina Hunt scanning The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Island for the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Both of us are currently working towards the Master of Information Management qualification at RMIT University. Being involved with the BHL project has been invaluable to our understanding of the challenges and importance of digitisation. As digital technology continues to develop and evolve, digitisation provides exceptional opportunities for further access and research. As such, digitisation is likely to play a significant role in our careers in information management into the future, and we are highly grateful to have had the opportunity to be involved in such a project.

Brendan Bachman with BHL-AU’s Technical Support Officer Chris Healey.

The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant is a remarkable guide to the birds of some of Australia’s more outlying territories, specifically Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and areas of the Antarctic. Published in 1928, the title contains detailed description and distribution information for a number of species, as well as beautiful illustrations of each bird. Many of the species covered in the book were extinct when the book was published, while others became extinct in the decades afterwards. This adds to the unique nature of this title. Only 225 copies of this work were produced, and around 57 are currently held in library collections worldwide.

Plate 43. Mathews, Gregory M. (Gregory Macalister). The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Art by Henrik Grönvold. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

The book was written by noted ornithologist Gregory Macalister Mathews. Born in 1876, Mathews grew up in Australia before moving to England, where his interest in birds became an obsession. Over his life Mathews contributed to a significant number of ornithological works, but none drew more attention than his Birds of Australia (which is also available on the BHL website, the final volumes of which were digitised by the BHL Australia project at Museums Victoria). During the creation of Birds of Australia, he regularly worked 16 hour days, and through the course of this work he acquired 30,000 skins and around 5,000 books.

Despite dedicating much of his life to their study, Mathews “was not really interested in the living bird”, and was “essentially a bibliophile” (Kloot, 1986). Mathews stressed that The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands was not a supplement to his far more famous Birds of Australia, but he did believe that the birds discussed should be considered part of any list of Australian birds. Certainly, it follows the same format, has the same publisher and should be considered a related work.

Plate 32. Mathews, Gregory M. (Gregory Macalister). The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Art by Henrik Grönvold. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands includes 45 hand-coloured lithographs and monochrome plates, with this work being one of the last publications worldwide to include hand-coloured plates (Pasquier & Farrand 1991). These were the work of two illustrators — Henrik Grönvold and Frederick William Frohawk.

Grönvold was a well-known Danish naturalist and lithographer who predominately illustrated birds and their eggs. Born in 1858, he worked on a wide range of ornithological works, including Birds of Africa and The British Warblers, and he created a remarkable 600 plates for Mathew’s Birds of Australia.

Frederick William Frohawk was born in 1861 and had an interest in illustration and natural history from an early age, catching a rare pale clouded yellow butterfly at the age of seven. Despite losing virtually all sight in one eye during his school years, he went on to become a noted illustrator of butterflies and birds. Among his notable works is The complete book of British butterflies, which he both wrote and illustrated.

References

Kloot, T 1986, ‘Mathews, Gregory Macalister (1876–1949)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mathews-gregory-macalister-7517

Pasquier, R. F., & Farrand, J., Jr 1991, Masterpieces of Bird Art: 700 Years of Ornithological Illustration. Abbeville Press. pp. 180–181.