The Natural History Museum

After going to Kew Gardens, we hopped back on the tube and headed back to South Kensington to the Natural History Museum to see their botanical illustration room. No disappointment this time!

We headed straight to the Images of Nature Gallery to find the botanical illustration gallery:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/galleries-and-museum-map/images-of-nature.html

Botanical Illustration is the art of depicting plants in both a scientifically accurate and beautiful way. The illustrations should be accurate enough to enable identification of a plant and will often include a main image of the plant at it's most beautiful, accompanied by smaller images including details of leaves, flowers, seeds, cross sections and close-ups. It may also include details of insects that it attracts or settings where it is likely to be found and text descriptions.

We saw some of the earliest and most beautiful botanical illustrations, some original but also on the video screens with short films which were very informative and I learned a lot from them. I recorded them on my phone, but have since found them on youtube and they make much clearer watching! Here, Judith Magee, curator of rare books at the Natural History Museum, introduces the purpose of natural history art and some of the Museum's treasured artworks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=119&v=awirRBMXaeg

The main inspirational discovery for me was that engraving was so important to botanical illustration. The initial illustration would be done in watercolour, but then in order to be seen by many people, they would be reproduced by way of metal plate etching and printing, or intaglio printmaking. Here is the video where I found this information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=bB7HshYosx4

This got me very excited about having a go at metal plate etching. I have had a quick go at dry point etching in Stage 1, but I would very much like to take this further and have another practice on acrylic, then try metal plate etching. I found the following tutorials on youtube, which I will refer back to when I am ready to try this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQvghHs15hA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNKn4PORGBI

As you will have seen if you followed the link above and watched the film, Sydney Parkinson is the artist they are specifically referring to. I mentioned him in my previous blog post from Kew Gardens - he is the artist Joseph Banks, who made Kew Gardens the world leading botanical garden that it is today, took with him on the Endeavour and the voyage of discovery to South America, Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771. Parkinson sadly died on the voyage home of dysentery and was buried at sea, but he had created 280 finished and botanically accurate paintings and over 900 sketches and drawings.

The entire collection, including paintings that were completed by artists back in England after his untimely death, can be found here:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/library-and-archives/collections/cook-voyages-collection/endeavour-botanical-illustrations/index.dsml

You can arrange an appointment to view the original artworks, however at the time I visited, this Portia Tree and the metal etching plate were on display:

Whilst Sydney Parkinson is obviously a very important name in historical botanical illustration, there are many others, including the Bauer brothers Franz & Ferdinand, Georg Dionysius Ehret and Maria Sibylla Merian.

Franz & Ferdinand Bauer

Following a visit to England in 1788, Franz was hired by Sir Joseph Banks as the first resident artist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He was pioneering in his use of microscopes to produce detailed studies and his intricate drawings contributed to the classification of orchid species.

Ferdinand, on the other hand, was recruited by Banks as the natural history artist on the HMS Investigator voyage (1801–1805) during its circumnavigation of Australia. Working in collaboration with the botanist Robert Brown, he brought back to London hundreds of detailed pencil sketches, many of undescribed species, which he used as templates for the finished watercolours now preserved in the Museum.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/library-and-archives/collections/bauer-brothers.html

Some photo's I took of their work:

I like this style of botanical illustration, including the different stages of the life cycle of the plant, however I only have a few months for this project, not enough time to collect buds and seeds - I would need at least a year, but it will be possible for me to include details of the seed head, dispersal mechanism, seed, the seed under a microscope and the seedling as it puts down roots and begins to grow. This is what I will be focusing on.

Georg Dionysius Ehret

Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708 - 1770) is one of the most influential botanical artists of all time due to his development of the Linnaean style of botanical illustration (which Franz and Ferdinand Bauer learned and practiced in their work). Find more information on him here:

https://www.botanicalartandartists.com/about-georg-ehret.html

Here are the illustrations on display in the Natural History Museum:

Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian was a Naturalist, an Entymologist and a Botanical Illustrator and is rated as being one of the greatest ever botanical artists.

She is best known for her illustrations of plants and insects made as a result of her trips to the tropical country of Suriname on the north eastern cost of South America. Find out more about her here:

https://www.botanicalartandartists.com/about-maria-sibylla-merian.html

Here is an example of her work on display in the Natural History Museum:

I love the inclusion of the insects in the work - as a keen gardener I understand that the relationship between plants and insects is hugely important and it's wonderful that she recognised this and included them. Without pollinators many plants wouldn't be able to reproduce, equally some plants are blighted by specific insects. She is most noted for her work with insects.

"One of her principal claims to fame is that she is one of the first naturalists to have studied insects. She recorded and illustrated the life cycles of 186 insect species. Her evidence documented the nature of metamorphosis and contradicted contemporary ideas about how insects developed. She also discovered unknown animals and insects in the interior of Suriname. Her classification of butterflies and moths is still used today. She also undertook scientific expeditions at a time when these were unusual and normally undertaken by men only." - (Botanical art and artists website - link above)

There was also work on display by contemporary botanical illustrators such as Jessica Tcherepnine and Barbara Everard. As you can see, nothing much has changed in 300 years!

Jessica Tcherepnine