I've come across a large number of botanical illustrations while imaging herbarium specimens here at the New York Botanical Garden. Some illustrations are no more than delicate pencil sketches drawn directly onto the herbarium sheet, showing perhaps a stamen or a seed; many are about half or a quarter of the size of a herbarium sheet, with a wide array of views of a few different plant structures; and a few illustrations take up an entire page and display nearly every conceivable view of any plant structure that could require dissection.
The simple illustrations, drawn directly onto the specimen sheet, are typically not signed by the artist, though they are often quite well executed and lovely.
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| This illustration was drawn right onto the sheet. I took this photo at the NYBG. |
However, I did find many simple drawings accredited to Auguste Mariolle, who was the NYBG's first botanical illustrator (born in 1866). These drawings were done on seperate pieces of paper that were then paper-clipped to the herbarium sheets, instead of being drawn directly onto them. However, like other simple sketches, they are originals and depict only a few plant structures.
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| The drawings by Auguste Mariolle were some of the few of the small sketches that were accredited. I took this photo at the NYBG. |
The half or quarter-sized illustrations that I ran into among the West Indies specimens were usually copies, not original drawings. Another thing that I found interesting about these drawings was that nearly all of them were signed by the same two people--an E. Delpy and L. Pierre.
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| Medium-sized botanical illustration by E. Delpy. Pierre's signature happens not to be on this one, but it is on most others with Delpy's name. I took this photo at the NYBG. |
It turns out that E. Delpy was an artist who worked for the botanist Jean-Baptiste Louis Pierre (1833-1905). Pierre is known for his work on plants from tropical Asia. When Pierre found a new species, he would first do his analysis of the plant material and write out a description. Then, he would have Delpy do an illustration, and finally he would send out what is known as an "illustration with analysis" as his official species description.
In 1904, Pierre donated all of his specimens--a huge collection of over twenty thousand plants--to the Paris Museum. The Paris Museum later gave some of these specimens, and some copies of the illustrations that went with them, to other herbaria around the world. I read that these sometimes have “ex Herbario Musei Parisiensis” written on them, so I was exited when I saw the stamp on the above illustration, which is in French, but it says it is from the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, not the "Paris Museum". However, I think the two phrases might refer to the same museum. If that is true, than this illustration may have come from Pierre's collection. Pretty neat!
It was hard to find a lot of information about E. Delpy, including what his first name is, but I did uncover that he was the illustrator for one of Pierre's major works. This was Flore forestière de la Cochinchine, a five volume publication. Delpy is known today for the sheer size of his body of work and for the clarity and detail of his illustrations.
Here are some beautiful examples of full page illustrations, also by E. Delpy.
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| Large illustration by E. Delpy. Look at how many different dissections he includes for this one specimen! I took this photo at the NYBG. |
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| Large illustration by E. Delpy. I took this photo at the NYBG. |
Sources
Deroin, Thierry. "Enhancing the Asian botanic collections of the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris." From the ICOM Study Series.
Deroin, Thierry. "Enhancing the Asian botanic collections of the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris." From the ICOM Study Series.
