White Roses with a Pupa, a caterpillar and a butterfly

This is one of a series of 21 unsigned watercolours on vellum of similar subject and format, that Dr. Sam Segal has first attributed to Johanna Helena Herolt-Graff. The artist was a daughter of the well-known botanical artist Maria Sybilla Merian (1647-1717), who painted mainly flowers, fruit, insects and animals. Together they travelled to Surinam to study and draw flowers, fruit and insects, and they later published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Amsterdam, 1705. The fact that the series is so close to the work of Merian, but cannot be attributed to her, led to the attribution to her daughter. Most drawings in the series document the various stages of the life of an insect from pupa to caterpillar and to that of a (butter)fly. Two others from the series were recently published, C. Dumas and R.-J. te Rijdt, Kleur en Raffinement, Tekeningen uit de Unicorno Collectie, exhib. cat., Zwolle Amsterdam Dordrecht, 1994, figs. 33 and 33.1. Two further drawings from the group were offered in these Rooms, 14 November 1988, lots 157-8, illustrated (as Circle of Merian).