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JAY T. SNIDER COLLECTION OF ILLUSTRATED MANUSCRIPTS
LEPIDOPTERY – "Sammlung Lief: und Ehstlands Insecten dritte Klasse." Manuscript album of watercolor illustrations. Germany, after 1794.
Details
LEPIDOPTERY – "Sammlung Lief: und Ehstlands Insecten dritte Klasse." Manuscript album of watercolor illustrations. Germany, after 1794.
291 x 237mm. Calligraphic title page, 29 sheets of watercolor illustrations depicting 249 specimens, each page preceded by a small format leaf of paper with manuscript explanation and interleaved with purple paper (light finger soiling; pl. 24 with a tear and backed). Contemporary silk over limp boards, gilt decoration, edges gilt (sunned, light wear to edges), in custom box. Provenance: Asian Art Dealers of Upper Eastside NY.
Exquisitely rendered watercolor drawings of the moths and butterflies of Latvia and Estonia. The precise and beautiful depictions of insect life recall Maria Sibylla Merian’s work of the previous century—and the inclusion of caterpillars along with their adult forms reflects the influence of her discovery that the two organisms were actually one and the same. Although anonymous, the author-artist was clearly a well-trained entomologist, evidenced by not only the sharp attention to anatomical detail but the use of Linnaeus’s binomial nomenclature, introduced in the middle of the 18th century.
291 x 237mm. Calligraphic title page, 29 sheets of watercolor illustrations depicting 249 specimens, each page preceded by a small format leaf of paper with manuscript explanation and interleaved with purple paper (light finger soiling; pl. 24 with a tear and backed). Contemporary silk over limp boards, gilt decoration, edges gilt (sunned, light wear to edges), in custom box. Provenance: Asian Art Dealers of Upper Eastside NY.
Exquisitely rendered watercolor drawings of the moths and butterflies of Latvia and Estonia. The precise and beautiful depictions of insect life recall Maria Sibylla Merian’s work of the previous century—and the inclusion of caterpillars along with their adult forms reflects the influence of her discovery that the two organisms were actually one and the same. Although anonymous, the author-artist was clearly a well-trained entomologist, evidenced by not only the sharp attention to anatomical detail but the use of Linnaeus’s binomial nomenclature, introduced in the middle of the 18th century.