Natural History and Art

17th to 19th Century

 

 

The age of exploration, which helped to prove that the world was not flat, is generally said to have ended in the early seventeenth century. By this time European vessels were well enough built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet. Exploration, of course, continued. The east coast of Australia was first explored only in 1770. Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the 19th century. It also took much longer for Europeans to explore the interiors of continents. Africa's deep interior was not explored by Europeans until the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This exploration helped to expand man's curiosity of his world and their studies in natural history.

Natural history, which is the scientific research of plants or animals, usually leans towards the observational rather than the experimental.  In the Renaissance, scholars turned to direct observation of plants and animals for natural history, and many began to accumulate large collections of exotic specimens and unusual "monsters".  The rapid increase in the number of known organisms prompted many attempts at classifying and organizing species into taxonomic groups, culminating in the system of Linnaeus.

Artists and scholars would document the plants and animals by creating watercolors, drawings, etchings, engravings and lithographs.  Not all of the art was created by the person that actually saw the plant or animal, but sometimes the artist had to depend on the observation of explorers, which was not very accurate. 

The art beautifully chronicles many species, some of which are now extinct.  The art of the plants are commonly known as botanicals.  You can see the art by Curtis, Sweert, and Weinmann.  Audubon is one of America's most famous artist that recorded the birds of America.  You can see his plus others at Audubon, Bloch, Edwards, and Gould,