All posts tagged with sciart

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.

As we celebrate the role women have played in the natural history sciences, we can find many examples of successful women who have been under-appreciated for the meaningful work they did during their lives. Women like Maria Sibylla Merian, Mary Margaret Smith, and Evelyn Cheesman significantly advanced a variety of sciences, even if they have only recently been gaining attention for doing so. But historic relegation of women has also meant that countless people throughout history were denied the tools to achieve success in these fields. How many women could have been published artists or scientists, if it weren’t for societal expectations that never gave them the chance?

Within the collections of rare botanical texts and seldom seen manuscripts housed at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation is a beautiful work by a largely unknown artist, Dorothea Eliza Smith. Her Fruits of the Lima Market – a collection of watercolors that she completed between 1850 and 1853 – stands out as an exemplary creation made even more impressive by her relative obscurity and the sparse details of her life.

The beautiful lithographs produced by Elizabeth Gould show lively birds of all shapes and colors performing mating displays, protecting their young, and interacting with their environments. A far cry from the dead-bird-on-stick approach to book illustration of the 18th century and prior, Elizabeth’s birds are reminiscent of the more dynamic figures depicted by John James Audubon; in fact, distinguished ornithologist Prideaux John Selby proclaimed “I like [Elizabeth’s illustrations] as well as Audubon’s.”

Prominent botanist and cataloger of gardens, William Sherard (1659-1728), was hired by an aristocrat to tutor her grandson in botany for “hee loving my diversion so well.” This was Mary Somerset, the first Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1715), an accomplished gardener and botanist in her own right. She sought solace in “natural learning” and tending plants, some cultivated in what she referred to as her “infirmary.” As detailed in landscape historian and conservator Mark Laird’s splendid A Natural History of English Gardening (2015), her gardening activities were a refuge from bouts of depression. She remarked in a letter of her cataloging: “When I get into storys of plants I know not how to get out.” Laird’s chapter on Mary Somerset, and other recent scholarly investigations, examine her work and help elevate her role in the history of science. Rather than simply a diversion from melancholia, she was dedicated in her studies, blossoming late in her life.

How does a young woman create the most important record of Hawaiian flowers in the nineteenth century? Who helps her identify plants and find a London publisher? Why does she leave New Zealand for Niihau, the Forbidden Island? Thanks to a magnificent book in the Rare Book Collection of the Chicago Botanic Garden Library (and a little research), we can answer these questions.

With 44 delightful chromolithographed plates, Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands is no ordinary book. Its illustrations introduced the world to an exotic, endemic, and vanishing flora. Indigenous Flowers provides a marker to measure the impact of humans on the fragile ecosystem of two Hawaiian islands, yet another signal of the Anthropocene epoch. Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair (1840–90) was probably the most unexpected ambassador for plant conservation. Her breadth of botanical experiences in the Pacific, in both New Zealand and the Sandwich Islands (better known today as Hawaii), gave her a particular vision to recognize the effects of humans on local flora and fauna.

In 1805, the “Father of North American mycology”, Lewis David von Schweinitz (1780-1834), published an account of the fungi in Niesky, Germany with his friend and mentor, Johannes Baptista von Albertini (1769-1831). Documenting over 1,000 species, including 100 published as new-to-science, Conspectus fungorum in Lusatiae Superioris agro Niskiensi crescentium, e methodo Persooniana is still referenced to this day as a classic mycological text and ecological record.

The Conspectus is illustrated with 12 hand-colored plates based on drawings by Schweinitz, each featuring 6-10 figures of new species described. Whenever possible, Schweinitz based his drawings on fresh specimens, but when this was not an option, he referred to fungarium specimens or to a collection of earlier watercolors he’d created of representative specimens.

Today, these watercolor volumes are dispersed between several American institutions and offer a wealth of insight into the history and development of the Conspectus. The earliest volume of original watercolors related to the Conspectus is the Icones Fungorum Niskiensium, created (ca.) 1798-1802 and held in the archives of the Farlow Reference Library of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University. This volume served Schweinitz as a sketchbook of sorts, which he used to inform the final paintings in the Conspectus itself.

Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium has been described as one of the most beautiful works devoted to frogs and amphibians.

The work of German artist and naturalist Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium describes the natural history of all then-known frogs and toads indigenous to the Nuremberg region in Germany. The title is noteworthy first for the extensive, accurate information in the text, printed in two columns in both German and Latin.

The work is equally (if not more) renowned for its illustrations. The twenty-four folio, hand-colored copper engravings portray habitats, anatomy, reproductive behavior, and larval development stages in intricate detail.