- Museum number
- SL,5279.16
- Description
-
Iguana and flying beetle with a nasturtium, from an album of 40 drawings of birds, reptiles, insects, plants and shells, etc by various artists
Watercolour, touched with bodycolour, on vellum
- Production date
- 1705 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 255 millimetres
-
Width: 322 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The composition of this drawing has been compiled from elements which are seen in drawings elsewhere. The flying beetle (lunar-headed dung beetle) comes from a sheet of watercolour drawings of various beetles from a study book by Merian in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, and the blue iguana (keel-tailed iguana) comes from a watercolour on a different page of the same book. The iguana is in exactly the same position, but its hind right foot, missing here, is seen in the St Petersburg drawing (see E.Hollmann (ed), 'Maria Sibylla Merian: The St Petersburg Watercolours', Munich, Berlin, London, 2003, p. 84, no. 31). The handling of the watercolour and the treatment of the shadows is much less sophisticated here than in drawings executed by Merian herself. Ella Reitsma attributes this sheet to Dorothea Graff, the younger daughter of Maria Sibylla Merian in about 1705, and compares the treatment of the nasturtium, emerging in a simple form from a mound to the watercolour of a nasturtium with an iguana and a snake in Sl.5275,73.
Lit: E, Reitsma, 'Maria Sibylla Merian and her Daughters: Women of Art and Science', Amsterdam and Los Angeles, 2008, p. 216, fig. 159, and p.259
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2008 Feb-May, Amsterdam, Rembrandthuis, M.S. Merian & Her Daughters
2008 June-Aug, Los Angeles, J.P. Getty Museum, M.S. Merian & Daughters
2009 April - July, British Museum, Gallery 90, Merian and her Daughters
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred in 1845 to Manuscripts and returned to P&D 17 Nov 1886 (see note on fly-leaf of album). See also the P&D User's Guide, p.166 for further details. Transferred from the Department of Manuscripts.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- SL,5279.16
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: C,05.16
