Allioni, Carolo

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From Flora Pedemontanae. These beautiful 18th hand colored copper engravings were produced by the director of the Italian National Library by Carolo Allioni. All of the flower and plant species are wild (as opposed to cultivated). The thistles and dandelions are particularly attractive. Many, many works such as this 18th century collection were produced and sold as a collection black and white engraved prints with or without text. Virtually all of Allionio's Flora Pedemontanae sets were of an uncolored state. The collection Beaux Arts acquired was a black and white set but as you notice here, they are now beautifully colored. After our purchase, the two staff artists/colorists went to work researching the plants to determine appropriate color. (This is not always easy since the gallery has never had Italian speaking or reading employees). Once the correct colors were determined, the black and white prints were hand colored using a combination of watercolor and/or gouache (the artists of the eighteenth century called gouache body color. Either term refers to an opaque water color.)

Arena, Filippo

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From La Natura, e Coltura de'Ffiori Hand-colored copper engravings by Filippo Arena, Palermo, 1767-1768

Besler, Basilius

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Originally an apothecary and botanist in the early 17th century, Basilius Besler was commissioned by Prince-Bishop Johann Conrad von Gemmingen to record the progress and changes in the Prince's botanical garden in Eichstatt for each season of the year. Hundreds of different plant species were specially imported to this garden from the "New World" and from around Europe. Being the earliest pictorial record of flowers from a single garden, Besler's 1613 series Hortus Eystettensis depicts drawings are that true-to-life, yet are arranged and viewed in a decorative and elegant manner. Although scientifically exact, they evoke a true sense of beauty one would find in a garden. With two to three colorfully detailed plants per page, and beautiful calligraphy below, each of the 373 engraved plates were beautifully mastered. The editions show here include Altdorf, 1613 and Ingolstadt, 1713.

Bradbury, Henry

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The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland... Nature-printed, London, 1857. In 1853 Henry Bradbury patented his variation of nature-printing which made it possible to make a mould from the actual plant and use it as the printing block. The fern specimen was sandwiched between a smooth sheet of copper and a sheet of steel and put into a press. An electrotype for printing could then be made from the impression. The mould was inked with appropriate colours and then mould and paper were passed through the press. This printing method captures the plant's finest details like surface hairs and veins.

Brookshaw, George

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Taken from Pomona Britannica, George Brookshaw produced these marvelous aquatints that were printeed in colors and finished by hand. London, {1804} - 1812

Buc'hoz, Joseph Pierre

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Shown here are hand-colored copper engravings from Histoire Universelle Du Regne Vegetal…, Paris, 1775, by Pierre Joseph Buc’hoz. Buc’hoz was born at Metz, where he studied law and later medicine, obtaining a post as Physician in Ordinary to Stanislaus, King of Poland. He was also interested in the production of floras, florilegiums and compendiums on subjects such as botany, mineralogy, medicine, agriculture and ornithology.

Commelin, Jan

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Created in Amsterdam between 1697 and 1701, these hand-colored copper plate engravings are from Horti Medici Amstelodamensis Rariorum tam Orientalis, quam Occidentalis Indiae, aliarumque Peregrinarum Plantarum. This magnificent record of the exotic plants in the Amsterdam Physic Garden was produced by its director, Jan Commelin. The gardens were undergoing substantial enlargement during this time mainly due to introductions of plants from the Dutch East and West Indies by the Dutch Indies Company. This expensive and finely illustrated folio reflected the interest shown by the Dutch in the flora of their colonial possessions and was Commelin's most important contribution to botanical knowledge.

Draakenstein, Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot

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Illustrating the plants of Malabar, south India, Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (1678-1703) is one of the most celebrated pre-Linnaean books. The twelve folios of 791 hand-colored copper-engraved plates were published in Amsterdam by Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Draakenstein, colonial governor of Malabar. He employed local people to collect plants, learned Brahmins of Cochin to help with the text and three or four artists, two of them soldiers, to make the drawings. The drawings after these plants were by a missionary, Patar Matthew, a barefoot Carmelite. The plants are described in Malabarese, Latin, Sanskrit and Arabic. The engravings are very decorative and the line-work coldly brilliant. Produced over a period of 25 years on paper hand-made of cotton, it remains an important contribution to the botany and ethno botany of southern India.

Ehret, Georg Dionysius

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For many centuries leading up to the 18th, the medical profession had led the way in documenting the history of botany. Plants had been carefully cultivated in monasteries and private gardens for their medicinal properties, and many were thought to be endowed with magical properties. In 1715, Georg Dionysius Ehret, while employed as a gardener for a powerful German ruler, learned the art of watercolor illustration while documenting the ruler's gardens, eventually becoming very accomplished as an illustrator. In 1728, Ehret encountered an apothecary, Johann Wilhelm Weinmann who hired Ehret to illustrate plants. Ehret completed 500 illustrations within a year for Weinmann. In 1732, Ehret encountered another apothecary, Dr. Christoph Jacob Trew, who would become Ehret's life long friend and most influential patron. Trew commissioned Ehret to illustrate a new publication of very exotic plants to be drawn on large sheets of fine paper. By 1734, Ehret completed 80 illustrations and a cover page which were engraved on copper plates and hand colored, assembled together and published by Dr. Trew beginning in 1750 as Plantae Selectae. The publication continued issuance until 1773, 10 years after the death of Dr. Trew. Plantae Selectae was considered then, and now, as one of the greatest botanical color plate books ever published. Presented here are hand-colored copper plate engravings from Plantae Selectae.

Michaux, Francois Andre

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Francois Andre Michaux was the son of André Michaux, a royal French botonist sent by King Louis XVI to the United States in 1785 to find plants that might be valuable to France. Accompanied by his son Francois, they traveled in the United States, Nova Scotia, and Canada for a decade describing and naming many North American species. They returned to France in 1797, and Andre died in 1800 of tropical fever while on an expedition to Madagascar. Francois published a Histoire des arbres forestiers de l'Amerique septentrionale in France between 1810 and 1813. An English translation appeared in 1817-1819 as The North American Sylva from which these handcolored stipple engravings were taken.

Miller, John

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From Illustratio Systematis Sexualis Linnaei... An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus by John Miller, whose birth name was Johann Sebastian Mueller. Miller was a well recognized engraver and botanical artist who issued this work in twenty parts between 1770 and 1777 in London.

Munting, Abraham

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Abraham Munting was an eminent Dutch professor of botany and chemistry and a doctor of medicine. He was the son of Hendrik Munting (1583-1658) who, in 1642, founded a botanical garden situated within the fortification circuit of Groningen known as the 'Paradise of Groningen'. It was famous throughout Europe and a place of horticultural pilgrimage. Abraham greatly enlarged the garden when he became director in 1658. His first book, Waare Oeffening der Planten (1672) was published in Amsterdam and contained 40 copper-engraved plates describing the trees and plants of the garden. The work was expanded to a folio format adding new text and plates and appeared in Dutch Naaukeurige Beschryving der Aardgewassen in 1696 (Leiden and Utrecht). This folio containing 243 copper-engraved plates was primarily done by Munting to catalog medicinal plants. The plates depict plants set in or floating above landscape backgrounds with a select few pictured in terra cotta pots. This full pictorial background concept was entirely decorative and the first of its kind in a botanical work. The plates commonly present the plants far larger than life, oranges huge as pumpkins, cyclamens with heavy corms floating lightly in mid-air, gentle geraniums grown into giant trees. The Latin names are presented on elegant scrolls or crumbling tablets below. A fourth reprint with the title Phytographia curiosa was issued in 1702 and contained the 245 plates with a condensed text in Latin. Munting also included astrological information about daily and hourly influences of the planets to insure the observation of correct conditions for planting.

Poiteau, Antoine

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Pomologie francaise. Recueil des plus beaux fruits cultivees en France. Colour-printed stippled engravings with hand-finishing, Paris, 1846. Antoine Poiteau was trained as a botanist after an apprenticeship as a gardener in the Jardin des Plantes. After some years abroad, he worked on the illustrations for several books, both belonging to the group associated with Redoute. Poiteau based his drawings on particular specimens rather than as melded or ideal composites.

Trew, Christoph Jacob

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For many centuries leading up to the 18th, the medical profession had led the way in documenting the history of botany. Plants had been carefully cultivated in monasteries and private gardens for their medicinal properties, and many were thought to be endowed with magical properties. In 1715, Georg Dionysius Ehret, while employed as a gardener for a powerful German ruler, learned the art of watercolor illustration while documenting the ruler's gardens, eventually becoming very accomplished as an illustrator. In 1728, Ehret encountered an apothecary, Johann Wilhelm Weinmann who hired Ehret to illustrate plants. Ehret completed 500 illustrations within a year for Weinmann. In 1732, Ehret encountered another apothecary, Dr. Christoph Jacob Trew, who would become Ehret's life long friend and most influential patron. Trew commissioned Ehret to illustrate a new publication of very exotic plants to be drawn on large sheets of fine paper. By 1734, Ehret completed 80 illustrations and a cover page which were engraved on copper plates and hand colored, assembled together and published by Dr. Trew beginning in 1750 as Plantae Selectae. The publication continued issuance until 1773, 10 years after the death of Dr. Trew. Plantae Selectae was considered then, and now, as one of the greatest botanical color plate books ever published. Presented here are hand-colored copper plate engravings from Plantae Selectae.

Volckamer, Johann Christoph

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Johan Christoph Volckamer was the son of a physician, botanist and gardener and shared his father’s love of both Italy and gardening. The hand-colored copper engravings from Nurnbergische Hesperides, Nuremberg, 1708, included plants mostly from German gardens in the Nuremberg region in the first volume and Italian ones in a second. A third volume on gardens and greenhouses elsewhere in Europe was planned but never finished. So valuable are they as records of early eighteenth-century Italy that a selection of them was reprinted there in 1979. Botanical treasures such as olive and bay trees, the strawberry tree, a vast aubergine or eggplant, and a double plate of the nightblooming cereus are illustrated handsomely. Citrus fruit and blossoms, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, whole and cut open, is prominently shown on a large scale in the foreground, but also includes a very detailed view of an actual building, landscape or village.

Weinmann, Johann Wilhelm

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Phytanthoza Iconographia (1737 - 1745) was the first botanical work to use the method of color-printed mezzotint successfully. This was a technical and artistic advancement on previous botanical publications. Apothecary Johann Weinmann, director of a long-established pharmacy in Regensburg, Germany, was an avid plant enthusiast and commissioned a variety of artists to illustrate the ambitious eight-volume work. Based on Weinmann's own collection of plants, the 1026 copper-engraved plates, hand-finished in watercolor, depict several thousand interesting plants of the 18th century.

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