Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae
Encyclopedia
Botanical illustrator
A botanical illustrator is a person who paints, sketches or otherwise illustrates botanical subjects such as trees and flowers. The job requires great artistic skill, attention to fine detail, and technical botanical knowledge...
Ferdinand Bauer
Ferdinand Bauer
Ferdinand Lucas Bauer was an Austrian botanical illustrator who travelled on Matthew Flinders' expedition to Australia.-Biography:...
.
Bauer was scientific illustrator on board the Investigator during Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders
Captain Matthew Flinders RN was one of the most successful navigators and cartographers of his age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent, which had previously been...
' exploration of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and as such he worked closely with the expedition's naturalist, Robert Brown
Robert Brown (botanist)
Robert Brown was a Scottish botanist and palaeobotanist who made important contributions to botany largely through his pioneering use of the microscope...
. When these men returned to England in 1805, they brought with them thousands of specimens and hundreds of sketches. Initially, they planned to publish a large-scale work, to be entitled Illustrationes florae Novae Hollandiae, but this venture failed, and Brown decided to publish his scientific descriptions separately, in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, and later his own Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen
Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen
Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen is an 1810 flora of Australia by botanist Robert Brown. Often referred to as Prodromus Flora Novae Hollandiae, or by its standard botanical abbreviation Prodr. Fl. Nov. Holland., it was the first attempt at a survey of the Australian flora...
. Bauer then undertook to publish a lesser work himself, with Brown providing text limited to a brief preface and some captioning.
Unusually, Bauer not only did all the illustrations, but also engraved the printing plants and hand-coloured the illustrations. It was exceedingly unusual for a single artist to perform all three roles; it is said that Bauer did the engraving himself because he could not find a good engraver, and previous works of his were disappointing because of incompetent engraving.
Three issues of Illustrationes florae Novae Hollandiae were published, all in 1813. These three issues totalled fifteen plates, and a sixteenth was bound into some copies. Publication then ceased, probably because the venture was a financial failure. It is estimated that less than fifty copies of the work were sold, and some of these were uncoloured. It is therefore now an extremely rare book. In 1997, a copy was sold at Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
for $57,000.