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

Open All
/
Close All

  • Required Readings

    Blunt, Wilfred, and William T. Stearn. The Art of Botanical Illustration. London: Royal Botanical Gardens Kew; New York: ACC Art Books, 2021.
    –This is a wide-ranging survey covering the whole period we will be studying. Try and read or skim as much as you can, then familiarise 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.
    –This is a thoughtful, brief introduction to printing technology for both words and images up to the digital revolution.

  • Further Reading

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

    Oak Spring Garden annotated catalogues including many of the books that we will be studying during the course: 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; Raphael, An Oak Spring Pomona, 1990.
    –These beautifully produced catalogues include topical essays and extensive articles on each of the books described. They are all available free online: https://issuu.com/osgf

    Botanical Art and Artists website, https://www.botanicalartandartists.com
    –An extensive compendium of information about botanical art and illustration past and present.

    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.
    –“Professor Morton has achieved the near impossible…providing us with a lively, informative, and interesting survey of botany. Like all good histories, it throws new light on familiar figures and introduces others unknown to most professional scholars.” (Janet Browne, writing in 1982: this is still the best history of the subject, unfortunately now out of print.)

    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.

    Thiers, Barbara M. Herbarium: The Quest to Preserve & Classify the World’s Plants. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 2020.