8.1 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Botanical illustration | 8/11 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_illustration | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:43:35.237685+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== 19th century === In the 19th century a number of different methods of colour printing were developed in Europe, using including chromoxylography, which became the most successful of several methods of colour printing developed in the 19th century, and chromolithography. Other methods were developed by printers such as Jacob Christoph Le Blon, George Baxter and Edmund Evans, and mostly relied on using several woodblocks with different colours. Hand-colouring also remained important. From 1801, William Say worked on steel plates rather than the usual, less durable, copper plates used since the early 16th century. However, Jean-Michel Papillon revived the art of engraving, which reached a new peak with Thomas Bewick, who engraved the woodblocks "across the grain", making them much more durable. Robert John Thornton, A new family herbal, 1810, was engraved by T. Bewick. Invented in 1796 lithography quickly became the standard. Jan Kops' first issue of Flora Batava was published in Amsterdam in 1800 (last one 1934), with most of the illustrations in the first three volumes by Georgius Jacobus Johannes van Os), a flower and fruit painter for the Sèvres porcelain factory. Charles Alexandre Lesueur took part in the Baudin expedition to Australia (1800–1803) as a draughtsman, and ended his life as curator of the Natural History Museum of Le Havre. The painter Michel Garnier took part in the same expedition, which he left in 1801: he brought back numerous paintings of flowers and fruits from Mauritius and La Réunion which were later purchased and exhibited in the "Carporama" (a collection of wax models of exotic fruits from Mauritius, by Robillard d'Argentelle) of the Museum d'Histoire naturelle. Pierre Antoine Poiteau, both a botanist and artist, was a student of Gérard van Spaendonck and a disciple of Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Early in his career, he focused on collecting specimens in the Caribbean. In 1794, Pierre Jean François Turpin met botanist Poiteau in Hispaniola. Poiteau introduced Turpin to botany, and together, they studied and documented around 800 species from the Haitian flora. Between 1801 and 1820, Poiteau and Turpin created an extensive album of botanical drawings, featuring 147 original pieces. These illustrations depicted a vast array of European and exotic plants, often accompanied by detailed annotations on plant anatomy, including flowers, leaves, seeds, and fruits at various stages of development. While a few drawings were done in black ink or pencil, most were finely enhanced with watercolor. Many were published in Flora Parisiensis, by Poiteau and Turpin (1808) and some by Turpin (and Ernestine Panckoucke) in Flore médicale by François-Pierre Chaumeton (1814–1820). The most striking drawings were included in François-Richard de Tussac's Flore des Antilles ou Histoire générale botanique, rurale et économique des végétaux indigènes des Antilles (Paris, chez L'Auteur, 1808), one of the earliest illustrated works on Caribbean flora. Flore des Antilles featured 50 engraved plates, some in color and some in black engraved after drawings by Redouté and others. Turpin also illustrated Jean Louis Marie Poiret's Leçons de flore (1819–1820). Tussac is also remembered for an ill-advised Cri des colons against l'abbé Grégoire's De la littérature des Nègres (1810). By 1815, Poiteau had become the chief gardener of the royal nurseries at the Château de Versailles, later holding similar positions at the Château de Fontainebleau and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. He contributed to the Revue horticole (published 1829–1974). As for Turpin, he contributed to many botanical publications, including Icones selectae plantarum (1820–1840), and was elected a member of the Académie royale des sciences in 1833. He also collaborated with notable figures such as Delessert, Pyrame de Candolle, von Humboldt, Bonpland and others. Ferdinand Bauer illustrated Flora Graeca (1806–1840) and Illustrationes florae Novae Hollandiae (1813 - "Nova Hollandia" was the name applied to Australia). The naturalist Antoine Risso published an essay on lemon trees (1813) that had acclimatized well on the French Riviera, only a few decades after it started becoming a fashionable health resort for the British upper class. In 1813, a Swiss botanist, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, published Théorie Élémentaire de la Botanique, in which he placed emphasis on the study of evolutionary relationships in grouping plants together, rather than on shared morphological characteristics. He also contributed to phytogeography, agronomy and economic botany. Johann Matthäus Bechstein and Giorgio Gallesio both depicted plants alongside the animals that affect them. Bechstein's Naturgeschichte der schädlichen Waldinsecten (1798–1800) focused on harmful forest insects, thus offering valuable insights for forestry and agricultural entomology. Gallesio's Pomona Italiana (1820) focused on fruit cultivation in Italy and the insects and animals that affect the trees' growth and health. During the Victorian-era craze known as orchidelirium, more monographs were produced. John Lindley, a pioneering orchidologist, published The Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants (1830) and Sertum Orchidaceum (1837-1841 - and, in collaboration with William Hutton, a pioneering book on paleobotany, The fossil flora of Great Britain; or, Figures and descriptions of the vegetable remains found in a fossil state in this country. Famous orchid illustrators also include John Nugent Fitch, who contributed 528 plates to Thomas Moore's The Orchid Album (1882–97). Fitch also contributed to Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Kew Gardens was founded in 1840, around the same time as Victorian British horticulturists also developed a passion for ferns, pteridomania, which led to the creation of a new botanical journal, The Phytologist (1841) and more monographs like The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland (1855), also by Thomas Moore, illustrated by Henry Bradbury, who used Alois Auer's 'nature printing' process. Constantin von Ettingshausen's Physiotypia Plantarum Austriacarum is a landmark nature-printed book, originally featuring 530 plates (Vienna, c. 1855), later expanded to 1,000 plates in a 1873 Prague edition. Walter Hood Fitch's exceptional artistic skill, very long career (1834–88) and prolific output. He is best known for his collaboration with renowned botanists such as Joseph Dalton Hooker, a founder of phytogeography (Flora Antarctica, 1844–1859; The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya, 1849–51). Fitch's illustrations also appeared in Curtis's Botanical Magazine. He was a pioneer in the use of chromolithography for botanical illustrations. The agronomist Arsène Thiébaut de Berneaud, in his Traité élémentaire de botanique et de physiologie végétale, Paris, 1837, offers advice to all those who cultivate plants, with a wealth of illustrations. Anne Pratt, an autodidactic woman, rose to prominence when she published books (starting around 1840) she illustrated with chromolithographs. Louis van Houtte started the horticultural journal Flore des serres et des Jardins de l'Europe in 1845. Collaborators on the journal were Charles Lemaire, and Michael Scheidweiler. When Eugène Delacroix painted flower pictures in 1848–49, he opposed his approach to that of botanical artists, regretting "the study of details, which [some painters] have carried to a very high point," and for his part decided to "subordinate details to the whole" and "try to make pieces of nature as they appear in gardens, only by bringing together in the same frame and in a somewhat probable way the greatest possible variety of flowers." Anna Atkins hand-printed several albums of botanical and textile specimens, especially Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (between 1843 and 1853),[9] "the first photographically printed and illustrated book". In 1856 Iinuma Yokusai published the Somoku-zusetsu, the first botanical encyclopedia in Japan to use Linnaean taxonomy.