Botanical Art From the 1700s and Onward, a Few Examples

          

1) Georg Dionysus Ehret

Illustrations of Ehret, on the left, and the engraver Johann Jakob Haid, on the right, from Plantae Selectae by Christoph Jacob Trew (1750).
I took this photo at the NYBG. 

Georg Ehret is most well known for his beautiful work as a botanical artist in the 18th Century. He traveled extensively throughout Europe over his lifetime, illustrating for a variety of clients. In Holland, he met Carl Linnaeus and George Clifford (a wealthy banker with a garden full of rare plants), and was hired to illustrate their work, Hortus Cliffortianus. Ehret was widely influential during his lifetime and is today considered to be one of the greatest botanical artists of all time, with a style that is bold, colorful, well-designed, and yet still detailed and accurate. 

Banana tree illustration by Ehret (1750) in Plantae Selectae.
I took this photo at the NYBG.

Flower of the banana tree, illustration by Ehret in Plantae Selectae. Look at those bold colors!
I took this photo at the NYBG.

2) Sydney Parkinson

In 1768, botanist Joseph Banks, naturalist Daniel Solander, and botanical artist Sydney Parkinson traveled with Captain James Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific. Parkinson had been hired to draw all of the plant and animal specimens that Banks and Solander collected. Unfortunately, he died on the way to Cape Town, South Africa, but his art survived the journey. Over five hundred of Parkinson's illustrations were engraved on copper plates between 1771 and 1784, but they weren't printed until the 20th Century. Under very challenging, rushed, and dangerous conditions, Parkinson managed to produce an impressive number of plant illustrations that were not only scientifically valuable, but very beautiful as well. 

Plate from Banks' Florilegium.
I took this photo in the library of the NYBG.

3) Pierre-Joseph Redouté

   An illustration from Redouté's Les Liliacées. Such vibrant colors and delicate shading!

I took this photograph at the NYBG.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté was a Belgian botanical artist. He is widely regarded as one of the most popular and celebrated botanical artists in all of history. Redouté was very successful during his life, frequently doing work for royalty such as Marie Antoinette, or giving them painting lessons. One of his major works, published from 1802 to 1816, was an eight volume collection of his botanical art called Les Liliacées. 

Detail from the above illustration by Redouté. Even in his pencil drawings, his lines are clear and deliberate, while also creating an image that is lifelike and beautiful.                                          
I took this photograph at the NYBG.        

4) Alois Auer

A nature print by Alois Auer from Pflanzen: Blümen und Blätter (1853).
I took this image at the NYBG library.

In the 1850s, Alois Auer invented a new way to document botanical material with his method called "nature printing." In this method, a specimen was pressed directly into a plate of soft lead and the resulting stamped lead was painted with ink so that the image could be reproduced. The result is usually better for thin plants, and less suited for fleshy plants, but done correctly can yield a very detailed image of a plant, especially its venation patterns. This unusual type of botanical art, though beautiful and very accurate, did not become widely adopted, and interest in it declined during the late 19th Century. 

Sources

Blunt, Wilfrid and William T. Stearn. "Appendix A: Botanical drawing. Eight articles by Walter Hood Fitch, reprinted from 'The Gardeners' Chronicle', 1869." In The Art of Botanical Illustration. London, the Antique Collectors' Club Ltd.

Color Printing in the Nineteenth Century: Nature Printing. http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/color/natures.htm

The Endeavor Botanical Illustrations. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/art-nature-imaging/collections/endeavour-botanical/about2.dsml

Georg Dionysus Ehret. http://www.illustratedgarden.org/mobot/rarebooks/author.asp?creator=Ehret,%20Georg%20Dionysus&creatorID=97

The New York Botanical Garden: Plants and Gardens Portrayed. http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/Onlinexhibits/exhbtcata.html

Adult Education at the NYBG

Cover of the 2012-2013 NYBG Adult Education 

class catalog.

I took this photo at the NYBG. 

Yes, I am currently working at the New York Botanical Garden, but I must say that even the most unbiased observer would be impressed by the classes offered by the NYBG. They offer classes in all seasons, covering a breadth and depth of material that quite surprised me. Just to give you a taste, this season they have classes in botanical and natural science illustration, horticulture, gardening, botany, landscape design, and photography. They even have beekeeping! And not only do they have this fantastic variety of classes, they also have very specialized classes in each area. In botanical art alone, they are offering classes in oil painting, pencil sketching, shading techniques, pen and ink, drawing mushrooms, butterflies, and trees, multiple skill levels of drawing, painting, and watercolor, color theory, and even the history of botanical art. These classes are offered at a variety of locations--some are at the NYBG, some are in midtown Manhattan, and others are held elsewhere in the tri-state area. 

     An exercise in drawing twisting leaves, from a botanical art class at the NYBG. 
     Drawing by Joanne Strauss.

     I took this photo at the NYBG. 

Earlier this week I visited the NYBG's Botanical Watercolor II class, just to see what a botanical art class here is like. The teacher is Mary Christiansen, who herself earned a Certificate in Botanical Art and Illustration at the Garden. She has been teaching art at the Brearley School (a private school in Manhattan) for 27 years. 

When I got to the classroom a bit early, I wasn't sure whether the people talking inside were the class I was looking for or just a group of instructors comparing watercolor techniques before class. They were five women, all gathered around a small table at the front of the classroom. It turns out that this was the class, and Ms.Christiansen invited me to sit down with them. She was giving a demonstration of how to color a fruit, including shading, with watercolor. The model was some kind of shiny orange fruit, and her sample illustrations were so lifelike that the leaves looked almost like real leaves, just lying on the paper.

The shiny fruit model.
I took this photo at the NYBG. 

Look at those crinkled leaves. So realistic! From a previous fruit model that had leaves, I assume.
I took this photo at the NYBG.

I enjoyed observing this class. The students were all very focused and interested in Ms.Christiansen's every brushstroke, and in this intimate classroom setting they were able to ask questions freely as she demonstrated. 

The Watercolor II class observing a demonstration.
I took this photo at the NYBG.

Some of the lessons that I took away from my short visit:
1) You can use blue to color in the darker parts of an orange fruit.
2) "Cast shadows," or shadows cast by the subject, are not usually used in botanical art. (It makes sense, as the focus is really the plant itself, and not any sort of background or context). 
3) In botanical art, the light source is customarily on the left. 
4) "Glazing" is when you color by layering different hues over each other, as opposed to mixing all the colors together in a palette and then painting them on all at once.

  One of the students, Joanne Strauss, helping to explain glazing.

  I took this photo at the NYBG.   

5) Coloring is not a formula. You have to play with different combinations and techniques to achieve your desired effects.

Fruit examples, scrap paper showing Ms.Christiansen's color palette, and a magnifying glass for observing small details.
I took this photo at the NYBG. 

Observing the Watercolor II class was a lot of fun. Maybe on day I'll take one of these classes. While the NYBG offers many of its classes as part of a few different certification programs, these classes are also a great way to expand your skills and interests in a relaxing environment. 


Sources/Relevant Links

Adult Education at the New York Botanical Garden. http://www.nybg.org/adulted/

The New York Botanical Garden: Adult Education. Instructor: Mary Christiansen. http://conted.nybg.org:8080/WebModule/jsp/ed2df.jsp?df1=bio&df5=45268

Early Botanical Works in Woodcut

Earlier this week I had the amazing experience of visiting the Rare Books Room in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden. With the help of the library staff, I got to examine some of the most important books in the past five or so centuries of botanical illustration in Europe. And so, I would like to introduce you to a first set of books, all from the 15th and 16th centuries--the age of the woodcut. 

1) Peter Schoeffer's Gart der Gesundheit (Garden of Health)

Some interesting plant illustrations in the Gart der Gesundheit.The drawings were carved onto wood blocks for printing and colored in afterwards, sometimes not very neatly, as one can see here. The artist is unknown. 

Photo taken by me in the library of the NYBG.

Published in 1485, this tome was one of the "incunabula" produced during the early years of printing.  ("Incunabulum" is the term used for a book or pamphlet printed before the 16th century). This book was a guide to medicinal plants. Books like these, called herbals, were not uncommon throughout the Middle Ages or at the time that this one was printed. This herbal is especially well known today for its attempts at scientific accuracy in botanical illustrations at a time when most botanical illustrations were crude copies of drawings from classical texts. In the preface, the author mentions that since many of the plants he wished to describe were not found in Germany, he brought an illustrator with him to the Middle East to document these plants as he found them. Indeed, it does appear that many of the illustrations in the herbal were drawn from firsthand observation of the plant. However, there were still many that obviously were not. 

This book was produced at an interesting time in history, when printing itself was new technology and people were only beginning to realize the scientific inadequacy of the way botanical illustrations were being made. In this practice, images were passed down through the centuries by copying until the pictures showed little resemblance to the original living plant, the result of a very long game of illustrative telephone.

I have no idea what these could be. Seeds? This may be one of those examples of an illustration whose original intentions were lost. I just enjoy the calligraphy tongues on these little creatures. Peter Schoeffer was  trained as a calligrapher before becoming a printer, and this book clearly demonstrates his continued interest in calligraphy.
Photo taken by me at the NYBG.


2) Otto Brunfels'  Herbarum vivae eicones

                                 The title page of Herbarum vivae eicones. 

                                 Image taken by me at the NYBG.

This herbal was created by botanist (among other things) Otto Brunfels from 1530 to 1536. It focuses on German plants. It wasn't until this herbal that the scientific accuracy of the Schoeffer illustrations was surpassed, and indeed, the success and fame of  Herbarum vivae eicones to this day relies much more on the wonderfully detailed and realistic botanical illustrations of its illustrator, Hans Weiditz, than the text itself. Weiditz's drawings were created using live plant models, which makes a huge difference when it comes to accuracy. 

Illustration by Hans Weiditz. Notice that this image is much more detailed and realistic than the more diagram-like images of Shoeffer's Gart der Gesundheit.
Image taken by me at the NYBG.

 Weiditz was a very versatile illustrator, producing images for books about religion, medicine, science, law, wrestling, politics, and more. Petrarch, Erasmus, and Virgil are just a few of the authors whose texts he adorned. Unlike most other woodcut artists at the time, Weiditz rarely signed any of his work. As a result, though his work was well admired and reproduced during his life and after his death, it did not take long for his name to be lost. For centuries, people mis-attributed his art to others. Only in Brunfels' Herbal was Weiditz stated by name as the illustrator, and because of this someone was able to assign a name to Weiditz's large body of work.

3) Leonhart Fuch's De historia stirpium

                      Illustration of Leonhart Fuch in his book, De historia stirpium.
                      Photo taken by me at the NYBG. 

Fuchs was born in Bavaria and lived as a physician in Munich. His De Historia Stirpium (1542), was the second botanical work after Brunfels' to really use scientifically accurate illustrations. Importantly, the text is much more accurate and scientifically informative than Brunfels'. Albrecht Mayer created the illustrations from  observing living plants, Heinrich Fullmaurer transferred the drawings to wood blocks, and Veit Speckle carved out the woodcuts.

                        Illustration of Heinrich Fullmaurer and Albrecht Mayer hard at 

                        work, making botanical illustrations.

                              Credit: DR JEREMY BURGESS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

The illustrations of both Brunfels' and Fuchs' herbals were great works of botanical art in woodcut, though their artists' approaches to their subjects were often different. Mayer's art was typically more idealized, while Weiditz would faithfully render plants that were clearly wilted. Which is better, to accurately portray the appearance of your plant subject, or to show the plant as you think it should look? These are two different approaches, and with each approach certain information about the plant species may be gained and lost.

Image from De historia stirpium.
Photo taken by me at the NYBG.

4) Hieronymus Bock's Kreutterbuch 

Woodcut illustration by David Kandel. You can see his initials on the rock in the foreground. Kandel's illustrations were known for being detailed, though it looks like he put more detail into the people than the tree in this image!

Photo by me, taken at the NYBG.

Hieronymus Bock was a physician and botanist. He published this herbal in 1546. This herbal is known for its clear and detailed descriptions of plants, including some plants that had never been described before. Artist David Kandel completed hundreds of detailed and realistic illustrations for this edition. 

Drawing of a strawberry plant by David Kandel 
for the Kreutterbuch.
Image in the public domain.

5) Pietro Andrea Mattioli's Herbarz

Woodcut from Mattioli's Herbarz. Look at the detail in those leaves!
Photo taken by me at the NYBG.

Pietro Andrea Mattioli's Herbarz (1562) was a commentary on Dioscorides (the classical physician mentioned in blogpost #1). The book was an herbal for physicians to consult. This edition of Herbarz was accompanied by very large and extremely detailed illustrations by Giorgio Liberale. The artists and craftspeople of book illustration in the 1500s were typically not credited, but Mattioli did credit Liberale in this work, along with Wolfgang Meyerpeck, who did the woodcutting.

                                          Woodcut from Mattioli's                 Herbarz.

                Photo taken by me at the NYBG.

Sources

Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume 17, number 7. By Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). "Hans Weiditz: A Study in Personality."

Blunt, Wilfrid and William T. Stearn. "Appendix A: Botanical drawing. Eight articles by Walter Hood Fitch, reprinted from 'The Gardeners' Chronicle', 1869." In The Art of Botanical Illustration. London, the Antique Collectors' Club Ltd.

Garden of Health. http://www.medievalportland.pdx.edu/?q=garden-of-health-0

Hieronymus Bock, 1498-1554. http://library.cincymuseum.org/bot/bock.htm

Otto Brunfels. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2241.htm

Otto Brunfels (1488-1534). http://www.tcd.ie/Botany/tercentenary/origins/otto-brunfels.php

Peter Schoeffer: Printer of Mainz. http://smu.edu/bridwell_tools/specialcollections/schoeffer/schoeffertoc.htm

Stories from the Rare Books Collection. http://www.chicagobotanic.org/library/stories/renaissance.php

Walter Hood Fitch offers botanical artists some tips

"A correct eye for drawing is only to be rendered by constant observation." -Walter Hood Fitch

Walter Hood Fitch
Image is in the public domain in the U.S.

Today I thought it might be interesting to look at some general tips about creating botanical drawings. These tips were imparted by Walter Hood Fitch in some articles written for The Gardeners' Chronicle in 1869. Fitch, who lived from 1817-1892, was a prolific and talented botanical artist for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It is estimated that over his lifetime Fitch produced about ten thousand drawings. He even drew directly onto the lithograph stone sometimes to save time, which is the equivalent of skipping a rough draft, and takes a lot of confidence and skill to execute successfully.

An illustration of Blandfordia grandiflora by
Walter Hood Fitch, published in 1854.
Image is in the public domain in the U.S.

A lithograph stone.

This image is in the public domain.

Some of Fitch's tips for prospective botanical artists:

-Having background knowledge of botany is very useful--it can prevent you from making errors caused by incorrect assumptions about plant structure.

-Pay attention to detail: Note the shape of the stem, how the leaves attach, whether the leaves are serrated or lobed, the number of stamens, etc.

An illustration by Walter Hood Fitch that demonstrates the wide variety of 

forms that plants can take, down  to the smallest details. Published in 1874. 

This image is in the public domain.

-Be able to adapt. The plant you are drawing from may not exactly resemble the desired outcome of the drawing. Even if all of the flowers are pointing in one direction on the specimen, for example, the artist should present a variety of views in the drawing, so that all of the characteristics of the plant may be shown.

-When drawing dissections, such as of seeds or flowers, make sure they are drawn large enough to be useful. All of the little details should be easily visible. Depending on the symmetry (or irregularity) of the object, it may have to be dissected in different ways.

An illustration by Fitch showing different fruit dissections. 

This image is in the public domain.

 Illustration by Fitch showing a dramatically enlarged view of a flower
 and some dissections. 
This image is in the public domain. 

Sources:

Blunt, Wilfrid and William T. Stearn. "Appendix A: Botanical drawing. Eight articles by Walter Hood Fitch, reprinted from 'The Gardeners' Chronicle', 1869." In The Art of Botanical Illustration. London, the Antique Collectors' Club Ltd.

Kew, History & Heritage: Walter Hood Fitch (1817-1892). http://www.kew.org/heritage/people/fitch.html

What is botanical illustration?

People have been depicting the natural world since they learned how to draw on cave walls. Plants, which are so important to our survival (as sources of food, medicine and shelter) and which are also so beautiful to us, have featured in art for thousands of years.

Jasper amulet featuring some lotus plants, ca. 7th-5th century BCE. Possibly Mesopotamian.

Attribution: Walters Art Museum. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Herbal by Dioscorides, a Greek botanist and physician, written between 50 and 70 CE.

Image is in the public domain in the U.S.

People make art for many different reasons, including for decoratation, to document a subject, to tell a story, to express an identity or belief, or as part of a ritual. Works of botanical art differ from purely aesthetic or symbolic depictions of plants. Botanical art began as a way to document and help people identify important plants, rather than just portray their beauty. 

There is evidence from Pliny the Elder that botanical illustrations began to appear as early as the first century B.C.E. in books concerning herbal medicine. After the classical age there was a major decline in realistic portrayals of plants, and it wasn't until the fifteenth century that more scientific approaches to plant illustration begin to appear again. Today the main goal of the discipline is still to depict plants with scientific accuracy. To achieve this, botanical artists often work with botanists to ensure that their art portrays all of the nessesary details for plant identification. Oftentimes there will be multiple views of the same plant or same part of a plant, such as inside and outside views of a dissected seed or fruit, and everything is drawn to scale.


Illustration from Leguminosae in Engelmann (ed.): Natürliche Pflanzenfamilien. Vol. III, 3.

This image is in the public domain in the U.S.

But why not just take a photo?

While photographs can also be useful for documenting and identifying plants, many botanists feel that botanical illustration can better ensure that all of the needed details and characteristics will be shown on the same drawing, even if it would be hard to find them that way in nature. The botanical artist can draw from the specimen, show the botanist they are working with, and then adjust the drawing as needed. Drawings can also show details more clearly than they might appear in photographs. However, it is important to note that great advances are always being made in photography and in photo editing software, and it will be interesting to see how botanical drawings fare in the years to come.

Despite their main goal being scientific accuracy, there is a definite beauty to botanical illustrations. Precision, accuracy, and an amazing wealth of detail can be just as pleasing to the eye as Impressionism, especially if the composition of the drawing is as elegantly composed and well-executed as some of the best botanical drawings are.


Interesting/Relevant Links

One example of a new way that photography is being used for botanical work--the C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). The NYBG is currently working on digitizing their millions of Herbarium specimens (and have been for many years!) with the hope that their very high quality images will allow people from all over the world to study their specimens from afar.

Sources

Blunt, Wilfrid and William T. Stearn. The Art of Botanical Illustration. London, the Antique Collectors' Club Ltd.
Botanical Art. The NYBG.
Botanical Illustration. Botanic Gardens Conservation International.

Simpson, N. and Barnes, P. G. (2008), PHOTOGRAPHY AND CONTEMPORARY BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATION. Curtis's Botanical Magazine, 25: 258–280. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8748.2008.00628.x