Article ID: CBB857539070

Taylor White's ‘paper museum’ (2021)

unapi

For almost 40 years, the British jurist and Fellow of the Royal Society Taylor White (1701–1772) actively engaged in commissioning artists to paint plants and animals for his ‘paper museum’. White amassed a collection of almost 1000 drawings of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles, acquired by McGill University in 1927. His first recorded purchase was a watercolour by George Edwards (1694–1773). He also acquired works from Eleazar Albin (fl. 1690–ca 1742) and Jacob van Huysum (ca 1687–1740), but the majority of the watercolours were painted by two artists, Charles Collins (ca 1680–1744) and Peter Paillou (ca 1712–1782). In 2018 a research group at McGill University Library received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the project ‘Undescrib'd: Taylor White's paper museum’. The project produced a complete catalogue of the White collection, including attribution of all unsigned works, and digitized all paintings and notes. This paper documents the process surrounding the original creation of the collection, reviewing the careers of the artists and White's relationship with them, the value of the commissions and the challenges of painting natural history subjects. It also describes the mechanics of painting, including pigments, papers used and artists' techniques.

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Article Victoria Dickenson (2021) Introduction: Undescrib'd: Taylor White (1701–1772) and His Collections. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 507-513). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Dickenson, Victoria J. V.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Céline M. Stantina
Emily Zinger
Vida Javidi
Vane-Wright, Richard I.
Concepts
Scientific illustration
Science and art
Natural history
Painters and painting
Collectors and collecting
Visual representation; visual communication
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
Early modern
21st century
20th century, early
Places
Southern Africa
South Carolina (U.S.)
England
Netherlands
East Indies
North Carolina (U.S.)
Institutions
McGill University (Canada)
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
British Library
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