I-50. Six Hundred Years of Botanical Illustration - Advance Reading List

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  • Required Readings

    Read as much as you can of:
    Note: These two books are complimentary, Blunt and Stern emphasizing the art, Harris the science of botanical illustration. Blunt and Stern provide a wide-ranging survey of the great botanical artists and their works covering the whole period we will be studying; Harris is topical, looking at the importance of published illustration to the development of different areas of plant science, often using less well-known examples.

    Blunt, Wilfred, and William T. Stearn. The Art of Botanical Illustration. London: Royal Botanical Gardens Kew; New York: ACC Art Books, 2021.

    and

    Harris, Stephen A. The Beauty of the Flower. The Science and Art of Botanical Illustration. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2023.

    Familiarize yourself with the main image-making processes in one or more of the following:

    Bridson, Gavin D. R. Printmaking in the Service of Botany. Pittsburgh, PA: Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 1986. Out of print, downloadable PDF: https://www.huntbotanical.org/publications/show.php?126. Secondhand copies readily available at around $30 and recommended as resolution is lost in the PDF.

    Griffiths, Antony. Prints and Printmaking : An Introduction to the History and Techniques. London: British Museum Publications, 1980.

    Twyman, Michael. The British Library Guide to Printing: History and Techniques. Second impression, First published 1998 by The British Library. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

  • Further Readings

    A few suggestions for browsing and background reading which you might like to do before the class.

    Tomasi, Lucia Tongiorgi. An Oak Spring Flora. 1997; Tomasi, Lucia and Tony Willis. An Oak Spring Herbaria, 2009; Raphael, Sandra. An Oak Spring Sylva, 1989; and Raphael, Sandra. An Oak Spring Pomona, 1990. https://issuu.com/osgf

    Tyrell, Katherine. “The Top Botanical Art Compendium.” Botanical Art & Artists, 2015. https://www.botanicalartandartists.com/.

    Morton, A. G. History of Botanical Science: An Account of the Development of Botany from Ancient Times to the Present Day. London: Academic Press, 1981.

    Bleichmar, Daniela. Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

    Blunt, Wilfrid, and Sandra Raphael. The Illustrated Herbal. Rev. ed. London: Frances Lincoln, 1994.

    Bynum, Helen, and William Bynum. Botanical Sketchbooks. Princeton Architectural Press, 2017.

    Endersby, Jim. Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

    Kusukawa, Sachiko. Picturing the Book of Nature. Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

    McBurney, Henrietta. Illuminating Natural History. The Art and Science of Mark Catesby. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021.

    Nickelsen, Kärin. Draughtsmen, Botanists and Nature: The Construction of Eighteenth-Century Botanical Illustrations. Archimedes (Dordrecht, Netherlands) 15. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.

    Rix, Martyn. Indian Botanical Art: An Illustrated History. London: Kew Publishing, 2021.

    Shteir, Ann B. Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

    Flannery, Maura C. In the Herbarium. The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023.