Eleazar Albin was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 and watercolourist

Watercolor painting

Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...

 illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

 who wrote and illustrated a number of books including A Natural History of English Insects (1720), A Natural History of Birds (1731–38) and The Natural History of Spiders and other Curious Insects (1736). He has been described as one of the "great entomological book illustrators of the 18th century".

Nothing is known of his early life, though he may have been German-born and claimed to have been in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 in 1701. In 1708 he is known to have been married and living in Piccadilly

Piccadilly

Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. According to autobiographical details in A Natural History of English Insects, Albin taught watercolour painting before being instructed in natural history by silk weaver and naturalist Joseph Dandridge

Joseph Dandridge

Joseph Dandridge , was an English silk-pattern designer of Huguenot descent, a natural history illustrator, an amateur naturalist specialising in entomology, and a leading figure in the Society of Aurelians of which he was a founder member.Despite having left no published works, and not being part...

.

Works

• W. Derham & E. Albin. A natural history of English insects. Illustrated with a hundred copper plates, curiously engraven from the life: and (for those who desire it) exactly coloured by the author (London, Innys, 1729).
• W. Derham & E. Albin. A natural history of birds A natural history of birds etc. (3 vols. London, 1731-1738).
• E. Albin. A natural history of spiders, and other curious insects (London, Tilly, 1736).
• E. Albin. A Natural History of English Songbirds (1737). With coloured plates.
• R. North & E. Albin. The History of Esculent Fish" (1794).

External links

• A Natural History of English Insects (Digitised at GDZ Göttingen).