Women Botanical Artists

From an early point in her career, Merian’s art included both plants and insects, often pairing a caterpillar with the corresponding butterfly or moth.

Merian’s work had astounding color while demonstrating meticulous scientific accuracy. For example, for each insect, Merian recorded how it looked in each stage, from the creation of the egg until the end of its life.

In some pieces, Merian’s expertly drawn insects dominate the piece and involve the whole process of metamorphosis. In this illustration, she uses less color but still makes the brown insects jump out against the black lines of the plant.

The spikes of the caterpillar run against the fine lines of the backdrop, demonstrating Merian’s fixation on insects, down to the details of the tiny hairs on their backs. Her interest began from an early age, of which she said, “I have been studying insects since my early youth. I started with silk worms in Frankfurt am Main, the city of my birth.”

Merian found the flower spray that inspired this illustration in Suriname in January 1701, but the Acanthacee is drawn too short.

The creature, called wild wasp in Maribonse is depicted with additional inaccuracy, yet Merian wrote detailed descriptions of the nature of her insect specimens: in her research, that it was a social wasp and described its reproductive behaviors.

This piece shows the crown imperial, two bluebells, and insects brimming with life and vibrant colors.

Herolt shows that crown imperial is the focal point of the painting by meticulously detailing the delicate red-veined petals fully opened to reveal the flower’s pistil and stamen.

Herolt, like her mother, was fascinated with the metamorphosis of insects and often included them, in different stages of their lives, in her paintings. In this piece, a caterpillar and a moth interact with the colorful and finely drawn flowers.

Herolt’s work was often misattributed, but much of it has been recovered and identified. She emphasized three-dimensional petals and stems, often putting different flowers into the same arrangement and including the familiar insects that Merian illustrated, probably because of her stepfather’s influence.

Barbara Regina Dietzsch was a celebrated painter focused exclusively on flowers, birds, and insects. As a child she was well-trained in the artistic technique in her father’s workshop in Germany, proving especially gifted when she developed a new technique of watercolor over gold leaf on vellum. With access to the same family talents and resources as Merian and Herolt enjoyed, she had the opportunity to explore techniques and receive praise for her work. Like many other female flower painters of her time, the pieces she produced were translated into engravings.

This painting is highly representative of Dietzsch’s style: painting on vellum using dense layers of body color.

She also frequently used dark backgrounds to serve as a striking foil to her specimens.

In this painting, the two blooms balance gracefully on slender stems, one shown frontally and the other from the rear.

The white petals contrast arrestingly with the dark backdrop, while the long, undulating leaves seem to thrust forward from the darkness.

In this particular piece, Dietszch added a charming tortoiseshell butterfly (Aglais urticae).

Dietzsch took advantage of her social standing, but she worked diligently to make her work original by painting watercolors over gold leaf on vellum. While many of the artists in the collection were able to receive training, their accomplishments were particularly significant because, unlike their male counterparts, they could not continue to pursue art by traveling. Some challenged convention by arranging trips to study foreign plants, while others became impressively proficient in drawing the fine details of local plants.

Regarding the orange harvest, Brassey writes, “In many of the carts the golden fruit was already piled high, looking…[like] the garden of the Hesperides.”

Brassey was aware of the effects of colonialism and had a keen eye for political issues; she often featured images of “negroes,” or the workers she observed on her travels.

The white chrysanthemum set against a grey background is rendered with artistic precision and great delicacy.

The intricately overlapping units in the flower head demonstrate Cloquet’s proficiency in capturing meticulous detail. The shadowing on the petals adds depth to the subject, a feature common to her lifelike illustrations.

The plants were drawn from actual specimens in the Chelsea Physic Garden, which was established to educate apprentice apothecaries about plant identification, including new imported species that had never before been studied. Despite the fact that Blackwell had no training in the field of botany, she consulted with experts and filled a necessary and timely demand to document these herbals.

Like in many of her works, this piece demonstrates Blackwell’s interest in the many parts of a plant and often included them to help readers identify actual specimens in different stages of bloom.