Arti­cle Botanical Works on Paper

Focus on the Peck Feature

Dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, Dutch botanists, mer­chants, and artists turned their atten­tion to veg­e­ta­tion, near and far. Intel­lec­tu­al hubs like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lei­den cul­ti­vat­ed some of the first botan­i­cal gar­dens while ama­teur flower enthu­si­asts took an inter­est in per­son­al horticulture. 

This Focus on the Peck Col­lec­tion instal­la­tion cel­e­brates the arrival of Spring through two artist’s ren­di­tions of weeds and every­day plants. These botan­i­cal works by Dutch drafts­man Crispi­jn de Passé the Elder (c.1565-1637), along­side a much later work by French engraver Eugène-Stanis­las-Alexan­dre Blery (1805-1887), depict famil­iar veg­e­ta­tion with uncom­mon vital­i­ty and detail. Togeth­er, they show­case how artists ele­vate ordi­nary, yet visu­al­ly expres­sive plant life to unex­pect­ed prominence.


Dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, Dutch botanists, mer­chants, and artists turned their atten­tion to veg­e­ta­tion, near and far. Intel­lec­tu­al hubs like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lei­den cul­ti­vat­ed some of the first botan­i­cal gar­dens while ama­teur flower enthu­si­asts took an inter­est in per­son­al hor­ti­cul­ture. Although colo­nial traders in the Dutch East India Com­pa­ny intro­duced many new species to the Low Coun­tries, Dutch artists con­tin­ued to cap­ture the vibran­cy of seem­ing­ly mun­dane, local flora.

This Focus on the Peck Col­lec­tion instal­la­tion cel­e­brates the arrival of Spring through two artist’s ren­di­tions of weeds and every­day plants. These botan­i­cal works by Dutch drafts­man Crispi­jn de Passé the Elder, along­side a much later work by French engraver Eugène-Stanis­las-Alexan­dre Blery, depict famil­iar veg­e­ta­tion with uncom­mon vital­i­ty and detail. De Passé, as head of a promi­nent fam­i­ly of engravers, draft­ed por­traits of nobil­i­ty, bib­li­cal scenes, and botan­i­cal trea­tis­es. The pen and ink works pre­sent­ed here may have been stud­ies for a print­ed flo­ral pat­tern book, used pri­mar­i­ly by artists, or for the herbar­i­um Hor­tus Floridus (1614), intend­ed for botanists and gar­den­ers. With Blery’s dra­mat­ic engrav­ing of the com­mon pas­toral weed colts­foot, the works show­case how artists ele­vate com­mon, yet visu­al­ly expres­sive plant life to unex­pect­ed prominence.

Stud­ies of Mal­low and Nightshade

Crispijn de Passe the Elder, Studies of Mallow and Nightshade, c. 1600, pen and brown ink and brown wash

Crispi­jn de Passé the Elder, Dutch, c. 1565 – 1637, Stud­ies of Mal­low and Night­shade, c. 1600, pen and brown ink and brown wash, The Peck Col­lec­tion, 2017.1.60.

See Stud­ies of Mal­low and Night­shade in more detail here.

These sen­si­tive draw­ings offer an inti­mate look at Crispi­jn de Passé’s artis­tic process beyond his more well-known engrav­ings. Here, he ren­ders two diver­gent sil­hou­ettes of mal­low and night­shade. On the left, the curvi­lin­ear form of mal­low — com­posed of shape­ly leaves and flow­ing petals — imparts live­li­ness to the draw­ing. As a com­mon med­i­c­i­nal plant, images of mal­low fre­quent­ly appear in herbar­i­ums and phar­ma­co­log­i­cal books. Mal­low here is paired with night­shade, often asso­ci­at­ed with death due to its toxic berries, and togeth­er the two stud­ies evoke the theme of life’s tran­sience or van­i­tas. De Passé often incor­po­rat­ed van­i­tas sym­bol­ism into his reli­gious prints, but iden­ti­fy­ing a deep­er mean­ing between this pair­ing proves dif­fi­cult with­out addi­tion­al visu­al clues. 

Stud­ies of Oak Branch­es and Leaves

Crispijn de Passe the Elder, Studies of Oak Branches and Leaves, c. 1600, pen and brown ink

Crispi­jn de Passé the Elder, Dutch, c. 1565 – 1637, Stud­ies of Oak Branch­es and Leaves, c. 1600, pen and brown ink, The Peck Col­lec­tion, 2017.1.59.

See Stud­ies of Oak Branch­es and Leaves in more detail here. 

De Passé’s depic­tion of sprawl­ing foliage spills across the com­po­si­tion. Rather than employ­ing the defined linework seen in his draw­ings of mal­low and night­shade, de Passé con­tours these oak leaves with errant hatch­ing and loose pen strokes. Oak trees were a com­mon sight in the forests of north­ern Europe, and by the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry they were asso­ci­at­ed with virtues of strength and resilience. Like his stud­ies above, how­ev­er, it is dif­fi­cult to attribute these inter­pre­ta­tions to De Passé’s draw­ing with­out fur­ther context. 

Colts­foot

Eugène-Stanislas-Alexandre Blery, Coltsfoot, 1843, etching.

Eugène-Stanis­las-Alexan­dre Blery, French, 1805 – 1887, Colts­foot, 1843, etch­ing, Gift of Charles Mil­lard, 91.76.

See Colts­foot in more detail here. 

In the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, lith­o­g­ra­ph­er, painter, and engraver Eugène Blery gained recog­ni­tion for his detailed land­scapes and botan­i­cal prints. Inspired by his tours of pas­toral France, Blery devot­ed him­self to a print­mak­ing career that cap­tured the dynam­ic out­doors. In this etch­ing, Blery ele­vates a com­mon weed of the French coun­try­side into a dra­mat­ic focal point using a com­bi­na­tion of nat­u­ral­is­tic detail and fan­tas­ti­cal per­spec­tive. Occu­py­ing the composition’s mid­dle ground, the gar­gan­tu­an leaves of the colts­foot unfurl from del­i­cate stems. Sharp con­trasts of light and dark invite the view­er into the shady canopy under­ly­ing this veg­e­tal palace while the hazy and diminu­tive out­line of a tree, in the back­ground, secures the grand scale of this majes­tic, wild plant. Instead of the sym­bol­ic evo­ca­tion found in De Passé’s draw­ings, Blery’s print denotes grandeur through its unique scale and perspective.

Amrut Mishra, Ack­land Grad­u­ate Intern and PhD Can­di­date in the Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (as of sum­mer 2022)

April 22nd – July 17th 2022