Lilium-Martagon Canadense Majus maculatum

This gouache painting of Lilium-Martagon: Canadense majus maculatum, otherwise known as Turk’s cap lily or Martagon lily, is one of 37 various paintings of flowers, moths, butterflies, and shells within Ehret’s A Collection of Flower Paintings on Vellum.

Ehret began releasing batches of large numbers of flower engravings in 1748, and continued until his death in 1770. Because of the many pieces that feature butterflies or moths in this collection on vellum, it is possible that these works were intended as a continuation of his popular Plantae et Papiliones Rariores series, which shared that hallmark. Compiled from 1756 to 1769, A Collection of Flower Paintings on Vellum includes pieces depicting a single floral subject, as well as images that combine flowers with butterflies and moths, providing a visual analysis of the symbiosis between flora and their pollinators. Ehret also illustrates an assortment of seashells at the end of the manuscript that have been speculated to be a private collection of his, without the intent of publication.

Lilium-Martagon is an extensive species of lily that is found across Eurasia, from Portugal to Mongolia. Inhabiting the margins between forest and field, the Turk’s cap lily thrives in shaded slopes dappled with sunlight. Similarly, the White Admiral butterfly featured alongside the lily populates forest edges with partial shade from southern England to Japan. Both of these species live with isolated elegance, Lilium-Martagon rarely found in wild clusters with more than three individual plants, and Ladoga camilla, the White Admiral, appearing typically in ones and twos.

Accurate from the lily’s minute speckling to the relationship that the White Admiral butterfly and the Martagon Lily share, Ehret’s work was astoundingly proficient and never abandoned botanical precision for artistic decoration. In praise of one of Ehret’s other published works, famous french botanist Bernard de Jussieu articulated perfectly, “The coloured drawings of plants which you have published surpass in beauty and exactitude everything that has appeared in this genre till now.”