John Abbot and William Swainson: Art, Science, and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century Natural History Illustration (2019)
Neri, Janice L. (Author)
Nummedal, Tara Elaine (Author)
Calhoun, John V. (Author)
University of Alabama Press
Publication date: 2019
Language: English
Physical Details: 256
An archive of never-before-published illustrations of insects and plants painted by a pioneering naturalist During his lifetime (1751–ca. 1840), English-born naturalist and artist John Abbot rendered more than 4,000 natural history illustrations and profoundly influenced North American entomology, as he documented many species in the New World long before they were scientifically described. For sixty-five years, Abbot worked in Georgia to advance knowledge of the flora and fauna of the American South by sending superbly mounted specimens and exquisitely detailed illustrations of insects, birds, butterflies, and moths, on commission, to collectors and scientists all over the world. Between 1816 and 1818, Abbot completed 104 drawings of insects on their native plants for English naturalist and patron William Swainson (1789–1855). Both Abbot and Swainson were artists, naturalists, and collectors during a time when natural history and the sciences flourished. Separated by nearly forty years in age, Abbot and Swainson were members of the same international communities and correspondence networks upon which the study of nature was based during this period. The relationship between these two men—who never met in person—is explored in John Abbot and William Swainson: Art, Science, and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century Natural History Illustration. This volume also showcases, for the first time, the complete set of original, full-color illustrations discovered in 1977 in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand. Originally intended as a companion to an earlier survey of insects from Georgia, the newly rediscovered Turnbull manuscript presents beetles, grasshoppers, butterflies, moths, and a wasp. Most of the insects are pictured with the flowering plants upon which Abbot thought them to feed. Abbot’s journal annotations about the habits and biology of each species are also included, as are nomenclature updates for the insect taxa. Today, the Turnbull drawings illuminate the complex array of personal and professional concerns that informed the field of natural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These illustrations are also treasured artifacts from times past, their far-flung travels revealing a world being reshaped by the forces of global commerce and information exchange even then. The shared project of John Abbot and William Swainson is now brought to completion, signaling the beginning of a new phase of its significance for modern readers and scholars.
...MoreReview Beth Fowkes Tobin (2021) Review of "John Abbot and William Swainson: Art, Science, and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century Natural History Illustration". Archives of Natural History (pp. 199-200).
Similar Citations
Article
Allan Ingram;
(2023)
Medicating Georgia: Writing Doctors in the Old South
(/p/isis/citation/CBB842011214/)
Article
Céline M. Stantina;
(2021)
Taylor White's ‘paper museum’ (1725–1772): understanding the scientific work of an unpublished naturalist
(/p/isis/citation/CBB995611158/)
Article
David A. Lowther;
(2019)
The Art of Classification: Brian Houghton Hodgson and the “Zoology of Nipal” (Patron's Review)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB063288106/)
Article
Kohler, Robert E.;
(2008)
From Farm and Family to Career Naturalist: The Apprenticeship of Vernon Bailey
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000775035/)
Book
Mab Segrest;
(2020)
Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum
(/p/isis/citation/CBB644941122/)
Book
Louis A. Ferleger;
John D. Metz;
(2014)
Cultivating Success in the South: Farm Households in the Postbellum Era
(/p/isis/citation/CBB064809821/)
Article
Herrington, Philip Mills;
(2012)
Agricultural and Architectural Reform in the Antebellum South: Fruitland at Augusta, Georgia
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001200325/)
Book
Janet Croon;
(2018)
The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865
(/p/isis/citation/CBB535058537/)
Book
F. Lewis Smith;
(2017)
J. Edgar Thompson: The Georgia Rail Road Years, 1833-1845
(/p/isis/citation/CBB418281581/)
Book
Iannini, Christopher P.;
(2012)
Fatal Revolutions: Natural History, West Indian Slavery, and the Routes of American Literature
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001550793/)
Article
Sweet, Julie Anne;
(2009)
A Misguided Mistake: The Trustees' Public Garden in Savannah, Georgia
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001231363/)
Book
E. Charles Nelson;
David J. Elliot;
(2015)
The Curious Mister Catesby: A "Truly Ingenious" Naturalist Explores New Worlds
(/p/isis/citation/CBB747178091/)
Book
Fishman, Gail;
(2001)
Journeys through Paradise: Pioneering Naturalists in the Southeast
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000650731/)
Book
David Mabberley;
(2018)
Painting by Numbers: The Life and Art of Ferdinand Bauer
(/p/isis/citation/CBB345457063/)
Article
Richard Fallon;
(2023)
The illustrated natural history lectures of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins given in Britain, 1850s–1880s
(/p/isis/citation/CBB811726863/)
Article
Matthew Fishburn;
(2022)
Dwarf emus from Baudin's voyage (1800–1804): An overlooked engraving by Nicolas Huet (1770–1830)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB934796083/)
Book
Giuseppe Olmi;
Giuseppe Papagno;
(2006)
La natura e il corpo. Studi in memoria di Attilio Zanca
(/p/isis/citation/CBB679826638/)
Book
Debra Lindsay;
(2018)
Maria Martin's World: Art & Science, Faith & Family in Audubon's America
(/p/isis/citation/CBB967535104/)
Book
Nancy Rose Marshall;
(2021)
Victorian Science and Imagery: Representation and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Visual Culture
(/p/isis/citation/CBB466922035/)
Book
Christoph Irmscher;
Rosamond Purcell;
(2019)
The Poetics of Natural History
(/p/isis/citation/CBB494542808/)
Be the first to comment!