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Lot Essay
An attribution to Olga Aleksandrovna Fedchenko, née Armfeld (1845-1921) has been suggested for these watercolours. Olga Aleksandrovna was the wife of the Russian botanist and explorer of central Asia, Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko who lived in Tashkent. After Fedchenko froze to death in the Alps in 1874, his wife strove to produce a lasting monument to him by publishing a work on the products of Turkestan that they had collected together over the years. Olga had accompanied her husband on all his later expeditions and the majority of the specimens were actually collected by her.
This group of studies for a publication on the genus Prunus persica is sold with two original manuscripts hand-written in Russian, one entitled 'Peaches from Kashgar', one of the main towns in Chinese Central Asia. On the manuscripts each peach is individually annotated with a physical description and where and when the peach was found and observed. The first manuscript is dated between 2 and 6 September 1882 and was completed at Aksu, and the second transcript, dated 16 September 1882, was completed at Ush-Turfan. The plates are annotated with Latin names which have been created from the local names, many of which are not recognized species: Persica Abdol and Persica Digdol for example.
This group of studies for a publication on the genus Prunus persica is sold with two original manuscripts hand-written in Russian, one entitled 'Peaches from Kashgar', one of the main towns in Chinese Central Asia. On the manuscripts each peach is individually annotated with a physical description and where and when the peach was found and observed. The first manuscript is dated between 2 and 6 September 1882 and was completed at Aksu, and the second transcript, dated 16 September 1882, was completed at Ush-Turfan. The plates are annotated with Latin names which have been created from the local names, many of which are not recognized species: Persica Abdol and Persica Digdol for example.