BIRDS, BUGS & BOTANY™
Antique & Antiquarian Nature Prints from the Gallerie Collection.
at the
Old Great Barrington Train Station
It was the Age of Discovery & the Era of Enlightenment.
Exploration around the world in the 17th, 18th & 19th centuries fueled a fascination with Botany, Natural History & Flora. Emissaries fanned out across the globe gathering specimens of exotic flowers & fauna to be catalogued by preeminent naturalists & bound into grand volumes. For these great books brilliant illustrations were drawn & carved into copper plates, hand-printed & individually colored by some of the most excellent artists of all time.
These magnificent original prints will be the focus of Art et Industrie’s spring exhibition at the Great Barrington Train Station, entitled BIRDS, BUGS & BOTANY™.
Featured will be selected works from some of the greatest Botanical Illustrators of the Golden Age of Botany, including early hand-colored flower engravings by Sydenham Edwards for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine from the 1780’s forward, Stipple-Engravings By Pierre J.F. Turpin for Chaumeton’s 1815 Flore Medicale, rare contemporaneous samples by ‘The Raphael of Flowers’ Pierre-Joseph Redouté, spectacular hand-colored orchids by John Nugent Fitch for Robert Warner’s 1882 The Orchid Album, Lavish lithographs from van Houtte’s mid-19th c. Flore Des Serres, and more.
Also featured will be select original J.J. Audubon hand-colored bird-prints from his 1840 Octavo Edition of The Birds of America together with full-size re-creations of the Havell engravings from the rare Amsterdam Edition, as well as wonderful works from Shaw & Nodder’s 1790-1814 Naturalist’s Miscellany, finely engraved encyclopaedia plates from Abraham Rees, Diderot & many others.
Coming soon: QUADRUPEDIA™; presenting our beautiful bestiary of fine antiquarian engravings of furry four-legged friends & other fascinating creatures.
Watch this space!