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January Issue 2006
Walls Fine Art Gallery in Wilmington, NC, Features Natural History Prints
Walls Fine Art Gallery in Wilmington, NC, will present the exhibition, Natural History Prints, featuring original prints by John Gould, Pierre-Joseph Redoute, William Curtis, and more, on view from Jan. 16 - 21, 2006.
Maria Merian left her husband to join a religious sect in Holland and from there went to South America with her young daughter to draw insects. These adventures of a modern woman began in the late 1600's. Yes, it was while Bach was composing and before Daniel Boone was born.
Francois Levaillant was a rare type of naturalist in the 1700's who actually went out to see animals in their habitats. The animals themselves got a glimpse of the exotic since Francois hunted lions while wearing bright silk, white gloves, an ostrich-plumed hat, and lace - all intended to "show respect for those noble beasts".
A sea captain had a son by a woman in Haiti. When the woman died, the captain brought the child to his home in France to be raised by his "legal mother", the captain's wife. To avoid conscription into Napoleon's army, the son was sent to Philadelphia, where it was determined that the boy was incompetent. The boy's name? John James Audubon.
One of history's most revered botanical artists was described as having a head like a Dutch cheese. Despite his caseic appearance - or perhaps because of it - Pierre-Joseph Redoute was Marie Antoinette's drawing teacher, and Napoleon's Josephine commissioned him to make a book of his drawings of her roses at Malmaison.
Although their stories are engaging, these people are remembered because of scientific drawings they produced during a period when art and science were partners. That fruitful relationship began with the ready availability of rag paper in the mid 1400's and ended with its conquest by wood-pulp paper and photography in the 1800's.
Rag paper, made from cotton, provides a lasting, archival surface without which we wouldn't have a copy of the Declaration of Independence or any of Thomas Jefferson's letters. Wood-pulp paper comes equipped with its own self-destruct mechanism. Wood fibers are held together naturally by a glue called lignin. When wood is no longer alive, the lignin begins to break down, forming acid. The lignin loses its glue quality allowing wood-pulp paper to become crumbly and the acid shrinks the fibers while turning them dark - look at the newspaper on your own back porch.
The availability of paper enabled the printing of the Gutenberg Bible in 1454. Reference books of "useful plants", called Herbals, were illustrated with woodcuts, a simple printmaking technique which produces beautiful if sometimes rustic images. Woodcuts are unable to produce many prints before they lose clarity. The First Book of the History of Plants is illustrated with woodcuts, printed in 1591 - while Shakespeare was writing Richard III.
By the mid 1600's copperplate engraving had completely replaced woodcuts permitting artists to produce as many as 300 copies of a delicately rendered image. Theodore de Bry (1528-1598), a contemporary of Elizabeth I and grandfather of Maria Merian, composed one of the first grand flower books with several volumes and over 300 illustrations. It was published from 1612-1618, each illustration engraved into a copper plate, printed, and hand-colored. His material was re-published in 2000 as one volume, but the illustrations lose in their translation through mechanical reproduction.
The first great bird books didn't appear until the 1700's with The Natural History of Birds by George Edwards - coinciding with the founding of St. Andrew's Golf Club in 1754. The precision demanded by ornithologists brought about the advancements in engraving of both aquatint and mezzotint which allowed for some color printing. Those improvements were adopted by botanical illustrators as well and are exhibited notably in both Robert Thornton's Temple of Flora (1799-1807) and Audubon's subscription-based publishing (1827-1839).
The next development in printed illustration was lithography, and it was used by John Gould and his team of artists, with glorious results, to portray the beauty of over 3000 birds from around the world. Gould's colorists used watercolor, oils, even gold leaf in an effort to reproduce the iridescence of birds in nature. Gould was three years older than Robert E. Lee.
The naturalist watched, drew, and watercolored nature. The printer engraved plates to copy the original drawings. The colorist applied color to the prints with the naturalist's watercolor as a guide. Although most of the original drawings by the naturalists themselves are in museums, many of their prints are still available in the market. The naturalists, engravers, and colorists invested in art and science. We can invest in history.
On Jan. 20, 2006, at
7pm, collector John Wurdeman will give a gallery talk about the
exhibition.
For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings,
call the gallery at 910/343-1703 or at (www.wallsgallery.com).
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