drawing;
album
- Museum number
- SL,5276.1
- Description
-
Flowers in a wreath, including lilies, anemones, peonies and a sunflower above; from an album of 160 drawings entitled 'Merian's Drawings of European Insects &c';
Watercolour and bodycolour, heightened with white (oxidised), on vellum
- Production date
- 1675-1690 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 383 millimetres
-
Width: 303 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Wreaths of flowers similar to this were used by Merian for the title-pages of the different sections to her pattern-book of flower engravings; 'Florum fasciculi tres' ( 'Neues Blumenbuch') of which the first part was published by her husband, Johann Andreas Graff in Nuremberg in 1675; and a subsequent enlarged edition in 1680. A very similar large double-centred anemone to the one seen here beneath the sunflower on the right is reproduced in the third part of the book (see 'Maria Sibylla Merian: New Book of Flowers', with an introduction by Melanie Klier, Prestel Verlag, Munich, Berlin etc, 2003, p.79). Although this sheet could be a preparatory study for a title-page which was not used, it is more likely that Merian's large elaborate drawings on vellum such as this sheet were made after the related prints, perhaps on commission.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Acquisition notes
- A letter in the Dept. of MSS. British Library from the apothecary, botanist and collector, James Petiver (d.1717) to Dr John Philip Breyne, a botanist in Danzig in 1706, mentions that a collection of 'Butterflies Moths etc.. painted on vellum beyond compare hath cost Dr Sloan on my recommendation about 200 Guinneas' the suggestion being that Hans Sloane had acquired this volume of drawings from Merian with Petiver acting as an intermediary in 1705 or early 1706. (British Library, Sloane MS 3335, fol 10r; see E. Reitsma, 'Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science', Amsterdam and Los Angeles, 2008, p.203).
Report to the Trustees, January 9, 1818: 'Mr Smith has been engaged in getting the two Vols. of Merian drawings into better order' / John Thomas Smith'
Inscribed on the fly-leaf of 5275: '5275 & 5276 / Transferred to the Dept. of Prints and Drawings / 11 March 1885 / Maunde Thompson'
This implies that the two Merian volumes, Sloane 5275 and 5276, had moved to the Department of Prints and Drawings by 1818, had returned to the Department of Manuscripts later in the nineteenth century and were transferred again to Prints and Drawings in 1885.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- SL,5276.1
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: N,02.1