Colouring by numbers: botanical art techniques investigated

From Richard Mulholland

[Author Richard Mulholland will give a lecture on Ferdinand Bauer and his colour code at the Weston Library on 3 June at 1 pm]

With the end of the annual RHS Chelsea Flower show on Saturday, and the masses returning to their own English gardens inspired, it’s worth looking back to the 18th century, to the golden age of botanical exploration and to an artist who was arguably the finest botanical painter in history, Ferdinand Bauer. Now the Bodleian’s Conservation Research department are helping to unravel his meticulous and unusual painting technique.

Ferdinand Bauer, Iris Germanicus, watercolour on paper
Ferdinand Bauer, Iris Germanicus, watercolour on paper (MS. Sherard 245/70) © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 2015

Outside of the natural sciences, Bauer (1760-1826), is little known. However, along with his equally talented brother Franz, he is certainly known to botanists. He has been called ‘the Leonardo of botanical illustration’, and is known in particular for the beauty and accuracy of his illustrations of flowers. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the paintings he made for the exquisite Flora Graeca, one of the most rare and expensive publications of the 18th century, and certainly one of the greatest botanical works ever produced.

Unprecedented in the quality of its illustrations, its printing and its attention to naturalistic detail, the Flora Graeca described the flowers of Greece and the Levant, and was published in ten lavishly-printed volumes between 1806 and 1840, purchased by an elite list of only 25 subscribers. It was the legacy of the third Professor of Botany at Oxford University, John Sibthorp (1758-1796) who funded much of the endeavour out of his own funds. Sibthorp met Bauer in Vienna in 1786, and immediately engaged him to join his expedition to collect and record specimens, and ultimately to paint the almost 1500 watercolours of plants and animals he sketched on his return to Oxford in 1787.

 

James Sowerby (after Ferdinand Bauer), Frontispiece [Mons Parnassus] for The Flora Graeca, 1806-40, hand coloured engraving (MS. Sherard 761).
James Sowerby (after Ferdinand Bauer), Frontispiece [Mons Parnassus] for The Flora Graeca, 1806-40, hand coloured engraving (MS. Sherard 761). © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2015
 What is of interest to us however is that Bauer used a particularly unusual technique to record his specimens in the field.

Bauer is exceptional among travelling botanical artists for the unusual techniques he employed for recording colour. He certainly observed and sketched live specimens, but he did not annotate these sketches with colour in the field as other artists did. Rather, subject to the limitations of working in the field – moving from place to place quickly in often difficult territory, and unable to carry large amounts of painting materials with him, he made only very basic outline sketches in pencil on thin paper.

He recorded the vital colour information, lost almost immediately after a specimen had been picked by annotating these with a series of numerical colour codes which likely referred directly to a painted colour chart, now lost. That Bauer’s paintings were created using only this colour reference system during his 6 years in Oxford, painting them sometimes up to five years after seeing the original plants, and that they are highly regarded even today for their botanical accuracy, speaks to his expertise as an artist and his astonishing memory for colour.

Page from sketchbook for Iris Germanicus showing numerical colour codes, graphite pencil on paper, 1786-7 (MS. Sherard 247/107). © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2015
Page from sketchbook for Iris Germanicus showing numerical colour codes, graphite pencil on paper, 1786-7 (MS. Sherard 247/107). © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2015

More pertinently, Ferdinand Bauer (and to a lesser extent his brother Franz) appear to be the only significant natural history artists to have used this kind of colour code in a practical way. Numerical codes of up to 140 different colour tones are found on early drawings by both Bauers from the 1770s. However, where Ferdinand seems to have continued to develop this initial system of some 140 colours into one of at least 273 colours for the Flora Graeca (and from then into a considerably more complex system of 1000 colours for a later expedition to Australia in 1801-5 – though how he could have used this practically is anybody’s guess), Franz Bauer, who was by then official botanical painter to Joseph Banks at the Botanical gardens at Kew, did not did not appear to use the system after he came to London in the late 1780s. Ferdinand of course, spent a significant amount of his time working in the field, and therefore much more in need of a system of shorthand than his brother. However, it’s interesting to note that no other travelling botanical artist used such a system to the extent that Bauer did.

An early colour chart (below) that appears likely to have been used by the brothers was found in 1999 at the Madrid Botanical Gardens, but Ferdinand Bauer’s 273 colour chart from the Sibthorp expedition and the 999 colour chart he may have used for the Matthew Flinders expedition to Australia, if they ever existed, have never been discovered.

Colour chart (c.1770s) discovered in the Archives of the Botanical Gardens in Madrid in 1999, and likely to have been used by the Bauer brothers © Archivo del Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC, Madrid.
Colour chart (c.1770s) discovered in the Archives of the Botanical Gardens in Madrid in 1999, and likely to have been used by the Bauer brothers © Archivo del Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC, Madrid.

This fact, however, presents a unique opportunity for us to carry out technical research into Bauer’s materials. The Conservation Research department at the Bodleian Libraries together with the Plant Sciences Department at the University are working on a three year Research project on Bauer’s techniques, funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant. Collaborating with the V&A, Durham University and the University of Northumbria the project aims to understand what the Flora Graeca colour chart may have looked like, and how Bauer might have used it. A large part of the project involves identifying the pigments used by Bauer in his magnificent Flora Graeca watercolours, cross reference these results with the numerical codes in his field sketches, and ultimately create a historically-accurate reconstruction of the lost colour chart.

Professor Andy Beeby from Durham University setting up a portable Raman spectrometer to analyse red pigments used on one of Bauer’s paintings © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Professor Andy Beeby from Durham University setting up a portable Raman spectrometer to analyse red pigments used on one of Bauer’s paintings © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

How will we do this? Often it is permitted to remove a minute sample of paint from a work of art in order to identify the material components. However this is rarely possible with works of art on paper, and is most certainly not possible for one of the treasures of the Bodleian’s collection! The work therefore is carried out in situ, bringing portable instruments to the object itself, rather than the other way around. For this we currently use three analytical techniques at Oxford: Raman spectroscopy, X-ray Fluoresce spectroscopy (XRF) and Hyperspectral imaging (Imaging spectroscopy).

Durham and Northumbria Universities have particular expertise in Raman Spectroscopy of cultural heritage objects, and Durham has built a portable instrument that is capable of positively identifying many of the pigments that Bauer used. The V&A Conservation Science section has a long history of collaborating with universities on technical research, and also has a great deal of expertise in Raman spectroscopy and its use in identifying pigments on artists’ watercolours.

In addition to the excitement of recreating Bauer’s lost colour chart, the project showcases the value of technical art history, a relatively new field that encompasses both scientific analysis and historical research into the materials and methods of the artist. It will go some way toward an understanding of Bauer’s extraordinary feel for colour and pigment, how he utilised his colour code, and ultimately how he was able to achieve such an impressive degree of colour fidelity in his work.

As we progress with the project, and as we learn more about Bauer’s materials and techniques, I’ll post again with more results. But should you find yourself in Oxford before September, a copy of both the Flora Graeca, and Bauer’s original illustrations for it are on display in the Marks of Genius exhibition at Bodleian’s Weston Library.

The Reach of Bibliography: Looking Beyond Letterpress in Eighteenth-Century Texts

The Lyell Lectures 2015 are given by Professor Michael F. Suarez, S.J., under the general title The Reach of Bibliography: Looking Beyond Letterpress in Eighteenth-Century Texts.

28 April: ‘Engraved Throughout: Pine’s Horace (1733) as a Bibliographical Object’. Video podcast, link here.

30 April: ‘True Colours: A Natural History of Louis Renard’s Poissons (1719)’.  (Link to podcast)
5 May: ‘Proliferating Images: Diagrams of the Slave Ship Brookes (1789)’.  (Link to podcast)
7 May: ‘Singular Multiples: Comprehending the General Evening Post (1754–86)’.  (Link to podcast)
12 May: ‘Naming Names: Underwriting Patronage in Tonson’s Cæsar (1712)’.  (Link to podcast)
14 May: ‘Abridging Histories: Capt. James Cook and the Voyages of Reading (1784–)’.  (Link to podcast)

The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands: containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects and plants: particularly the forest-trees, shrubs, and other plants, not hitherto described, or very incorrectly figured by authors. Together with their descriptions in English and French.  MDCCLIV. | London: : Printed for C. Marsh, in Round Court in the Strand; T. Wilcox, over-against the New Church, in the Strand; and B. Stichall in Clare-Court. Vol. II, p. 15, 'The great Hog-Fish/Le grand Pourceau'. Bodleian Arch. Nat. Hist. M. 5
The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands: containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects and plants: particularly the forest-trees, shrubs, and other plants, not hitherto described, or very incorrectly figured by authors. Together with their descriptions in English and French.
MDCCLIV. | London: : Printed for C. Marsh, in Round Court in the Strand; T. Wilcox, over-against the New Church, in the Strand; and B. Stichall in Clare-Court.
Vol. II, p. 15, ‘The great Hog-Fish/Le grand Pourceau’. Bodleian Arch. Nat. Hist. M. 5
Description of a slave ship (London: James Phillips, George Yard, Lombard Street, 1789), pasted inside the front cover of Douce 309, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale (Strasbourg, c. 1473)
Description of a slave ship (London: James Phillips, George Yard, Lombard Street, 1789), pasted inside the front cover of Douce 309, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale (Strasbourg, c. 1473)
The Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser. Number 9883. Thursday, December 18, 1760. Bodleian Johnson a.122
The Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser. Number 9883. Thursday, December 18, 1760. Bodleian Johnson a.122

 

Bodleian Vet. 23643 b.2, Caesar
An engraved picture plate from Caesar’s Commentaries (1712) published by Jacob Tonson the elder shows the arms of Simon Harcourt (1661-1727), Lord Chancellor in 1713. For the Harcourt family papers, see Bodleian Western Manuscripts collection
Silius Italicus, The second Punick war (1661), with plates underwritten with the arms of  prominent loyalists. (Bodleian Mason I 228)
Silius Italicus, The second Punick war (1661), translated by Thomas Ross, was dedicated to Charles II. The captions to the numerous plates honoured prominent loyalists. (Bodleian Mason I 228)
Bodleian Vet. A4 e.2816 and Vet. A4 e.350, two different abridgements of Daniel Defoe's satirical poem, Jure Divino
Bodleian Vet. A4 e.2816 and Vet. A4 e.350, two different pirated editions of Daniel Defoe’s satirical poem, Jure Divino. The edition on the left was actually published before the official folio edition. The frontispiece is the portrait of Defoe originally engraved for Defoe’s Works in 1703, and here copied (in woodcut for the abridged version on the right). The frontispiece of the legitimate folio edition of Jure Divino was a different portrait.

 

Printing, sculpture and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: display and lecture, 6 Feb.

On display in the Proscholium of the Bodleian Library now are examples of Renaissance books from the printing house of Aldus Manutius (c.1450-1515).

See the online exhibition:

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/online/aldus-manutius

One of the most visually appealing products of the Aldine press, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, will be the subject of a lecture by Dr Oren Margolis (Somerville College, Oxford), who will discuss the artistic and business background to the production of this exquisitely illustrated and mysterious Renaissance book. Dr Margolis will speak on 6 February in the Convocation House of the Bodleian Library, at 5:30 pm.  The lecture is free to attend but please register online:

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/upcoming-events/2015/feb/printing-sculpture

Reception following hosted by the Centre for the Study of the Book and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies.

Brain Teasing: Bartisch’s Ophthalmoduleia and Anatomical Flap Books

Nora Wilkinson, Harvard University

Georg Bartisch was a surgeon and an inventor, but he is remembered primarily for his Ophthamoduleia (literally ”eye-service”), a treatise on diseases and disorders of the eye. The 1583 text is notable for several reasons. First, it is widely considered the first Renaissance treatise on eye disorders and surgery. Secondly, though most serious texts were written in Latin at the time, the Ophthalmodouleia was published in the vernacular, German. Finally, the book, which Bartisch published at his own expense, included ninety one full-page woodcuts, several of which were layered to act as flaps. As a result, the reader could examine different layers of the human brain (for example) by flipping through the woodcuts. This experience simulated the process of dissection for students, professionals, and the general public.

Bartisch was not the only one – nor the first – to include interactive flaps in his text. Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder introduced the layered flaps to anatomical prints in 1538 when he used 24 woodblocks to create an anatomical print of the female body. Vesalius’ Fabrica, which marks the beginning of modern anatomy, included flaps; and in 1619, Johann Remmelin included 120 flaps in the anatomical illustrations for the Catoptrum Microscopicum, which has been digitised by the University of Iowa. This technique was still used long after the seventeenth century: E.J. Stanley created layered illustrations for an anatomical textbook in 1901. Read more and watch anatomical flap books in action here.

As useful as they were for simulating dissection, paper flaps were used in more than just anatomical texts. Indeed, the 1570 English edition of Euclid’s Elements uses flaps to illustrate geometric concepts. And as explored in an earlier post by Sarah Wheale, harlequinades used flaps to create ‘a surprise unfolding of the story.’

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18th-century printing innovations: conference, Sept. 2014

Harlequinades from the Bodleian Library's Rare Books colleciton

These notes on the Bodleian’s collection of harlequinades, by Sarah Wheale (Bodleian Rare Books), were  first posted in 2008-9, and are presented again in anticipation of the conference taking place in Oxford, Sept. 2014, ‘Forms and formats: experimenting with print, 1695-1815’ See the event posting to register: http://bit.ly/1lWPgxO

A harlequinade (known also as a metamorphosis, flap-book or turn-up book) is composed of two single engraved sheets. The first sheet is folded perpendicularly into four sections. A second sheet is cut in half and hinged at the top and bottom edges of the first so that each flap could be lifted separately. The sheets are folded into four, like an accordion, and then roughly stitched with a paper cover. A verse on each section of the flap tells a simple story usually concluding with instructions to turn a flap to continue. When the flap is turned either up or down the viewer sees that half of the new picture fits onto the half of the un-raised flap, so the act of lifting one flap after another creates a surprise unfolding of the story.

The Library has recently (in 2009) acquired an album of 89 coloured prints dating from the early 1820s. It may have been issued by William Darton Jr. (1781-1854) and his firm at Holborn Hill during the mid-1820s as a sample album to show potential customers examples of his work. It contains a small number of sheets originally issued in 1800 by William Darton Sr. (1755-1819);  11 harlequinades in unfolded sheets with the imprint of B. Tabart & Co., and some sheets bearing Darton Jr’s imprint with dates ranging from 1821 to 1824. This mix of imprints suggests that Darton Jr. inherited some of his father’s old stock upon his death, including some of Benjamin Tabart’s publications which William Sr. possibly acquired in 1811 when financial difficulties may have forced Tabart to sell off some of his stock.

The harlequinades are especially interesting as very few examples survive generally, and four of the eleven Tabart examples in this album are currently untraced elsewhere. There are certainly difficulties locating harlequinades in library and museum catalogues around the world as they can be treated equally as toys, books, ephemera or prints, but as some titles were not located by Marjory Moon in her bibliography of Tabart’s Juvenile Library it seems likely that some of the Bodleian copies may be unique survivals. It is also possible that these eleven titles represent Tabart’s entire output of harlequinades, but that is pure speculation.

Blue Beard. Sold by B. Tabart & Co., June 1st. 1809.
Robinson Crusoe. Sold by B. Tabart & Co. June 1. 1809.
Veroni or the novice of St. Marks. Published by B. Tabart & Co, June 1. 1809.
Mother Goose. Published by B. Tabart & Co., July 1st 1809.
Hop o’ my thumb. Published by B. Tabart & Co., Jany. 1st. 1810..
Black Beard the pirate. Published, by B. Tabart & Co., July 1st. 1809.
Parnell’s hermit. Published, by Tabart & Co., Jany. 31st. 1810.
Exile, as performed at the royal theatres. Published by B. Tabart & Co., June 1st. 1809.
Robin Hood. Published by B. Tabart & Co., June 1st. 1809.
Polish tyrant. Published, by B. Tabart & Co., Aug. 1st. 1809.
A tale of mystery. Published by B. Tabart & Co., Jany. 25th, 1810.
Shelfmark: Vet. A6 c.118

See the records of the pictured harlequinades here:

The Sister-Witches, or mirth and magic

Dr Last, or the Devil on two sticks

Ass-monkeyship

The first printing revolution re-examined: Oxford Bibliographical Society

12 May 2014: The Oxford Bibliographical Society hosted Cristina Dondi speaking about ‘the first printing revolution’ and our understanding of the transformation of the economics of communications.
Citing the many copies of 15thc-century books with former owners’ inscriptions or just localisable and datable decoration, and binding style or manuscript annotations, Cristina Dondi explained the possibilities of using books themselves as evidence for the impact of printing in transmitting texts and images.
The aim of the ERC-funded project headed by Dr Dondi, beginning this year, “The 15th-century Book Trade: An Evidence-based Assessment and Visualization of the Distribution, Sale, and Reception of Books in the Renaissance“, is to gather evidence from early printed books, to analyse and categorize the marks of ownership, by geographical area, period, or person (gender, status, and profession). This is the approach established by Dr Dondi in the database, Material Evidence in Incunabula. The current project will seek also to more closely analyze the textual contents of editions (not just the main text and author, but all dedications, prologues, etc.) This approach extends the practices of Bod-Inc, the catalogue of 15th-century books in the Bodleian, and promises to expand our knowledge of the transmission of texts in the early period of print.
A further exciting development will be image matching analysis of illustrations in Venetian incunables, using the image matching software developed by the University of Oxford Department of Engineering for the Broadside Ballads Online database hosted by the Bodleian Digital Library.

Help with 16th-century book provenance

Title page of Bodleian Library Don. e.817, with partially unread transcription
Title page of Bodleian Library Don. e.817
Bodleian Library Rare Books have posted the following to any helpful readers for identifying the provenance of this 16th-century publicatoin:

“Anyone like to help us transcribe this? We are halfway there!” See the catalogue record at:
http://tinyurl.com/nsc9ef7

See the images in the Bodleian Libraries CSB flickr sets:
Image 1
Image 2

Follow @RareBooksofBod on twitter for more questions and answers about the Bodleian Library’s Special Collections of printed books.

The Cadiz pirates

Portrait of Elizabeth I (1533–1603)  by Wilhelm Sonmans
Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
by Wilhelm Sonmans
(c) Bodleian Libraries; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Dr Anders Ingram (National University of Ireland, Hakluyt Edition Project) used copies of the second edition of Hakluyt’s Principle Navigations (1598-1600) to explore the nature of censorship in Elizabethan England. At issue was the passage describing the Cadiz Expedition of 1596, led by the Earl of Essex and Lord Howard, during which English and Dutch troops sacked the Spanish city.

But the failure to capture the Spanish treasure fleet, and the conduct of the leaders, including the distribution of the booty, led to royal suppression of Essex’s own account of his actions. Two years later, Hakluyt included in his Navigations a “brief description” written by the doctor who travelled on the Ark Royal. The pages containing this episode were later excised from many copies of the work, and a new title page was produced omitting mention of the Cadiz expedition. Examining the physical evidence in three copies of Hakluyt’s Navigations from Bodleian collections, Dr Ingram showed that these represented different variants, and called into question the reason for the removal of these leaves: was this censorship, or action by the publishers in advance of the appearance of Hakluyt’s second volume, printed in 1599, which had found a sponsor in Robert Cecil, one of the examiners of the costs of the expedition during the controversy?

The copies examined contained: (1) The edition intact with the Cadiz episode as originally printed and a title page dated 1598; (2) The Cadiz leaves intact, but with a new title page dated 1599; (3) The leaves containing the description of the Cadiz episode replaced with a later (c. 1720) reprint, in different type and differently set.

Tyrrell and Locke on Patriarcha non monarcha: Masterclass with Felix Waldmann, 26 Nov. 2012

In an exciting conclusion to the autumn season of masterclasses, Felix Waldmann (Cambridge) spoke on ‘James Tyrrell, John Locke, and the text of Patriarcha non Monarcha (1681): the evidence from some Bodleian copies’.
Examining three Bodleian copies, Dr Waldmann found that the pattern of annotations, corrections, and manuscript additions in these copies, from the libraries of Thomas Barlow (the subject of an earlier masterclass) and John Locke himself, contributed significant evidence touching on theories of the composition of the text, which have variously described the publication as a collaboration between Locke and Tyrrell or Tyrrell’s original work which inspired Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.
This was the second in the series of Early Printed Books masterclasses convened by William Poole (New College).