Natural History Paintings

Posted by John Blatchford May 25, 2007

(This blog relates to three of my articles, 'Insect Traps' ,'The Lanternfly' and ''Fly Exhibition in Paris'. These refer to two major exhibitions, one in Edinburgh and the other in Paris.)

Scientific interest in natural history began with the building of collections. Specimens were killed and preserved but, since the colours often faded rapidly in dead specimens there needed to be a record of the appearance of the living creature (or plant). Before photography the only way to capture an image was to paint it, so it is not surprising that many of the early naturalists were also accomplished painters.

The interesting thing for me is that the paintings of collected specimens often go way beyond what is needed to simply record the information. The primary concern was to capture all the details accurately, but usually there was also an attempt to build a set of these ‘snapshots’ into an aesthetically pleasing whole. The artwork displayed in both exhibitions shows this concern.

Most of the early collectors started out simply recording details and then moved towards pleasing designs, but Eugene Seguy is somewhat of a special case. He was originally a designer, and later he became an entomologist. His early work with flowers is pure design, the work on Butterflies is a mixture, and the later paintings of flies (see below) has moved away to focus entirely on the detail.

(I realise that Seguy's fly paintings are not easy to find on the exhibition website, so here are the instructions: go to the exhibition website then click on ‘Decouvrez l’exposition’. This leads you to a graphic, and you want to be in room 6 (Decouvrez le people mouche). When you get there you will be able to click on the link to ‘Les debuts’ (top left). Here you will finally see a photo of Eugene Seguy and two of his ‘fly’ plates.)

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