Featured book archive
Miss Smith
Studies of flowers from nature ... a selection of subjects from the choicest exotics, painted after nature, with a correct outline of each and instructions for producing a fac simile of the finished drawing.
Adwick Hall near Doncaster: Printed for and sold by Miss Smith, [1818].
8000.a.52
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Very fine aquatint lines visible in this detail of the peony; click for full page image. |
This beautiful volume of hand-coloured aquatints was one of many such works produced in the early nineteenth century to educate the leisured classes in the art of watercolour painting. This example distinguishes itself from the others by the very high quality of the illustrations. The work takes the form of a copy-book containing two sets of each of the plates, one coloured and one with only the aquatint outline, and full instructions on which paints to use to achieve a good impression of the original. There are very few known copies in libraries, and this is the only one with the second set of plates coloured, as was the intention, by a previous owner.
The publication was issued in parts according to the prospectus, which listed the price of a complete copy at five guineas. Comparing this to contemporary average earnings, the book cost the equivalent of £4000 today. The first part is listed in the Edinburgh magazine new publications for May 1818, and the work was presumably finished by 1820; listed at the head of the subscribers is “Her Royal Highness the Princess of Hesse Homburg”, a title Princess Elizabeth, daughter of George III and dedicatee of the book, held only for two years. The remaining subscribers number nearly 80, primarily women, suggesting that the work reached the audience its prospectus intended. “Mr Ackermann, London”, the publisher and printer who produced many highly illustrated volumes in the early 19th century, ordered ten copies. In total around 100 copies were subscribed to.
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Miss Smith's finely painted geranium; click for full page image. |
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The same image painted by the amateur book owner. |
Books to teach the art of painting from nature were produced in large numbers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, though very few survive. It has been suggested that once the plates were coloured in, the volume was discarded as ‘finished with’ rather than kept for future reference. Princess Elizabeth’s own copy was not listed in the catalogue when her library was sold at Sotheby’s in 1863, suggesting perhaps that she too completed the illustrations then discarded her copy. This kind of once-only approach means these works are relatively scarce; only two other copies of Miss Smith's work are recorded in library collections, the Bodleian copy being one of the monthly parts comprising two flowers only, and the University of Wisconsin's the prospectus only.
The owner of our copy clearly had a good eye for colour as the reproductions are mainly of a good quality, though they seem to have suffered from not having a fine enough brush; some of the more delicate veins and stamens are rather heavy. The instructions for artists include details of the specific colours to be used, but also general advice hints about how best to draw and paint: “Great care should be taken to acquire early a habit of exactness in sketching”, and “When a flower requires two or three teints, care must be taken not to make the second too great a contrast to the first”. This work has been praised particularly for the fineness of the aquatint lines; this technique of printing was similar to etching though not used as commonly. The lines can be seen in the detail of the peony above.
The book is also useful as a technical record of the use of materials: the directions for colouring a geranium note that “a few drops of lemon juice must be used with the pink saucer” while for the peony they record rather cryptically “if the white be diluted with hartshorn [a solution of ammonia], it will prevent the change so frequently injurious to paintings”. Another contemporary book on the subject, Brown's New treatise on flower painting, or, Every lady her own drawing master (London, 1799) suggested that a novice painter needed only ten colours of paint, being vermillion, lake, King's yellow, gamboge, yellow oker, prussian blue, raw siena, burnt siena, burnt umber and sap green; any more would be "enough to destroy all hopes of succeeding; I must confess, if would puzzle me exceedingly to paint with such a collection of colours". Miss Smith evidently felt her young ladies could cope with a larger range, and included Payne's grey, carmine, gall-stone and ultramarine amongst others.
Very little is known about the artist, though she had a very good hand. She might perhaps be identified with the Miss J. Smith who in 1798 provided an illustration for Menthae Britannicae, by William Sole. In this work the plates are black and white, as the author had "always been of the opinion that good plates are injured by colouring"; an unfair judgement, perhaps, given the unusual talent Miss Smith demonstrates here. There was a Ladies' boarding school at Adwick Hall in the early 19th century, though the contents were sold in 1833–1844 and the building itself demolished in 1864. The flowers themselves were not in Miss Smith’s own garden, but “were selected from the botanic garden of Mr W. Crowder of Doncaster which abounds with rare exotics as well as herbaceous plants”.
The Library actively collects works with hand coloured illustrations, and this item was purchased in November 2007. There are also significant numbers in the collection bought from John Harley-Mason, though he specifically avoided botanical works; this volume helps to fill the gaps in our collection. There are many similar works in the Tower which were not considered suitably academic to be added to the Library's main catalogues, and these are gradually being added to the Newton catalogue as the cataloguing project progresses. Another unusual botanical book acquired this year is Ansberque's Flore fourragère de la France (8000.bb.12) , printed by the 'phytoxygraphique' process where the plants themselves were used to create a life-sized image by being inked and pressed onto a lithographic stone, which was then used to print the plate.
References and further reading:
- W. Blunt and W. Stearn, The art of botanical illustration (London, 1995) 370:5.b.95.13
- G. Dunthorne, Flower and fruit prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries (London, 1938, repr. New York 1970) Waddleton.a.0.26
- S. Sitwell and W. Blunt, Great flower books 1700–1900 (London, 1956, rev. ed. London, 1990) B150.370.16
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