Painting of the Day: A Watercolor by LeMoyne, 1575

Botanical Watercolor
Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues, 1575
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Huguenot artist, Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues (1533-1588) created this drawing as part of his album of 59 botanical watercolors in 1575. This leaf from the folio shows an iris stem terminating in two blossoms.

For centuries, LeMoyne was thought of only as a basic artist who provided images for simple woodcuts, the rediscovery of this album in the early Twentieth Century altered this perception. Now, he’s been given his due as one of the most important and prolific botanical painters in history. 

Painting of the Day: A Watercolor by LeMoyne, 1575

Botanical Watercolor
Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues, 1575
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Huguenot artist, Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues (1533-1588) created this drawing as part of his album of 59 botanical watercolors in 1575. This leaf from the folio shows an iris stem terminating in two blossoms.

For centuries, LeMoyne was thought of only as a basic artist who provided images for simple woodcuts, the rediscovery of this album in the early Twentieth Century altered this perception. Now, he’s been given his due as one of the most important and prolific botanical painters in history. 

Object of the Day, Museum Edition: The Musa Paradisiaca, 1701-1705

Musa Paradisiaca
Maria Sibylla Merian
1701-1705
Crown Copyright
The Royal Collection
Image Courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Bertie and I are getting a slow start today.  I suppose it's because we have so much to do...so much, in fact, that you could say we're going..."bananas."

And, thus begins the theme day that I promised yesterday.

Let's start with this lovely piece from The Royal Collection.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) painted this brilliant watercolor between 1701 and 1705.  The watercolor and body-color has been washed over vellum which has been lightly etched with the outlines of the composition of a branch of bananas.  The branch of "Musa paradisiaca" displays the large red flower, a bright green, fuzzy-wuzzy caterpillar and the patterned brown moth which the caterpillar will be when it emerges from its dark chrysalis.

This handsome piece was acquired by King George III,  King of the United Kingdom (1738-1820) while still Prince of Wales.  The Prince Regent/future debauched King had a long-standing love of the exotic, and found such botanical watercolors of plants and trees from far-flung places to be most appealing.

Merian painted this and other botanicals while visiting the Americas.  The banana tree is not indigenous to the Americas, having been transplanted there from south-east Asia by Spanish explorers  who cultivated the trees for their fruit. Merian described this unfamiliar, exotic fruit thusly: "it is used like an apple, and has a pleasant flavour like apples in Holland; it is good both cooked and raw."

I concur.

Painting of the Day: A Watercolor by LeMoyne, 1575

Botanical Watercolor
Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues, 1575
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Huguenot artist, Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues (1533-1588) created this drawing as part of his album of 59 botanical watercolors in 1575. This leaf from the folio shows an iris stem terminating in two blossoms.

For centuries, LeMoyne was thought of only as a basic artist who provided images for simple woodcuts, the rediscovery of this album in the early Twentieth Century altered this perception. Now, he’s been given his due as one of the most important and prolific botanical painters in history. 

Sculpture of the Day: A Figural Group with Birds and Strawberry Leaves, 1755

Figural Group
1755
Unknown French Maker
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Finding an Eighteenth Century French figural group such as this work of glazed porcelain and gilt metal in its original condition is quite rare. Most of them seem to have been made into lamps. And, most of those lamps have been surmounted by ugly shades for the last forty years or more. I blame Joan Crawford.

This delicate sculptural group features a pair of birds—facing each other--upon a tree stump next to a peculiarly small dog. The group is mounted in gilt metal and fitted with white hard-paste porcelain flowers. As was the fashion of the time, the stump is encircled with leaves and flowers applied in relief. The metal mounting consists of supporting structure of curved and pointed stems to which are attached flat strawberry leaves of gilt metal, five roses and a tulip which serves as a candle holder.