How to Draw or the Anatomy of the Past

Posted by
Lito Apostolakou
Oct 16, 2009

The Victorian artist's botanical drawing practices and guidelines are peculiarly evocative of the those of the historian. Writes Endersby in his Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (UOC 2008) :

Given sufficient skill and practice, even a completely flattened and dried specimen, once it had been restored using water, could be cut apart to reveal the structure, providing valuable clues as to its original appearance and classification.

Walter Hood Fitch, the 19thC renown botanical artist, often drew plants he had never seen working from field sketches or dried specimens. A master of dissection with a deep knowledge of plant anatomy and structure, Fitch selected those plant organs for illustration that "appeared to him the most characteristic of the species or genus".

Isn't the past a dried specimen, which once possessed a material existence but is now flattened and dead and exposed to the historian's observant eye? The past is "restored", cut apart by the skilled master of history to reveal its structure and to yield the valuable clues as to its original appearance. The past is "illustrated", reconstructed in writing but what part of it is recorded? Only those parts that appear to the master of history as the "most characteristic". Like the botanical artist, the historian records what he or she already knows.

For the Victorian student of botanical art, "drawing was only a learning process for those who already knew what to look for". The historians' quest for "truth" is similar to the botanical artist's quest for the perfect drawing: both are looking to describe a "truth" that is consistent with a pre-learned, or given, world-view.

Walter Fitch, Drawing Master of Botanical Art: Flower Paintings or How to Draw Plants
Online Resources for Botanical Art: Botany Illustrations and Antique Flower Prints
The Botanical Treks of Joseph Dalton Hooker in the Himalayas
Historical Drawings of Rhododendrons: Botanical Paintings of Himalayan Plants