Description
Blackwell’s images were first published in England as A Curious Herbal: Containing 500 Cuts of the Most Useful Plants which Are Now Used in the Practice of Physick, Samuel Harding, London: 1737-38. This set of 18th-century prints included medicinal plants used for herbal remedies, ornamental garden varieties, fruits and vegetables, wild flowers, trees, and coral branches. The offered pineapple studies are from a slightly later edition published in Germany, also in the 18th century, by Christopher Jacob Trew. He reissued the work in an enlarged form with plates re-engraved by Nikolaus Friedrich Eisenberger, who also added details of blooms, fruits, and reproductive systems to Blackwell’s botanical designs.
Elizabeth Blackwell was encouraged in her creation of botanical studies by Sir Hans Sloane, president of the Royal College of Physicians, who oversaw the Chelsea Physick Garden of pharmaceutical plants. Blackwell was neither a botanist nor a professional artist before undertaking this project; her initial motivation in taking on the project of creating a catalog of medicinal plants for Sloane was to raise money to free her husband, Alexander Blackwell, from debtor’s prison. She drew upon the garden’s resources for fresh botanical specimens and produced about 10 plates a week, executing the drawing, etching and coloring. From prison, her husband wrote the accompanying text. The book was a great success, and Alexander Blackwell was released, only to become entangled in Swedish politics and be sentenced to death for treason several years later, in 1747. Blackwell survived for the next 11 years, but no further information is recorded about her life.
Nikolaus Eisenberger was a Nuremberg-based court painter, draftsman and copperplate engraver who collaborated on Hortus Nitidissimis published by Christopher Jacob Trew as well as Trew’s reissue of Elizabeth Blackwell’s Herbarium Blackwellianum.
Christopher Jacob Trew (1695-1769), a physician and botanist, was botanical artist George Ehret’s primary patron, publishing both Plantae Selectae, one of the finest ever 18th-century botanical sets in which these prints were issued, and Hortus Nitidissimis, also with fine botanical plates by Ehret, J.C. Keller, Nikolaus Eisenberger, Barbara Regina Dietsch and others. Hortus presented a highly decorative and comprehensive collection of tulips and other prized garden blooms. Trew met Ehret when the latter was working as an artist for a banker in Regensburg, Germany, and the two remained friends and associates for life. Ehret’s work was so accomplished, that the famous botanist Linnaeus wrote to Trew that “The miracles of our century in the natural sciences are your work of Ehret’s plants. [N]othing to equal them was seen in the past or will be in the future.”
Condition: Generally very good with the usual overall light toning, wear, handling. Giltwood frames with custom corners, and cream mat, very good, added circa 2000, with light handling and wear.
References:
Blunt, Wilfred, rev. by Stearn, William T. The Art of Botanical Illustration. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antique Collectors Club, 1994. pp. 151-154 (Blackwell), pp. 159-166 (Trew), p. 166 (Eisenberger).
“Buch des Monats.” Deutches Museum. March 2000. http://www.deutsches-museum.de/bib/entdeckt/alt_buch/text0300.htm (12 April 2005).
“Plants and Gardens Portrayed.” LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden. http://www.nybg.org/bsci/libr/exhbtcata.htm (12 April 2005).
