Mark
Catesby was the first artist / naturalist to undertake the daunting
task of cataloging and illustrating the natural history of the New
World. To reign in the scope of the project, Catesby focused on the
Southern colonies and the Bahamas, and selected plants and animals
that were not commonly found in England.
To gather as many specimens as possible and draw the flora and fauna
from life, Catesby traveled from England
to the American Colonies twice, first from 1710 to 1719 and again from
1722 to 1726. He undertook the second expedition at the invitation of
the Royal Society of London (Sir. Isaac Newton, President) and
primarily funded his project by fulfilling requests to bring back
plant specimens and seeds from the new world to London collectors.
In an effort to cut costs and accurately translate his original
watercolors to the copper plates, Catesby learned the craft of
engraving and hand-colored many of the prints himself. The result is
a work of immense personality and originality. The compositions are
notable for the quirky combinations of plants, snakes, insects and
animals in odd proportions (insects are often larger than birds, and
flowers routinely dwarf large animals.)
In the course of his travels, Catesby made fresh
scientific discoveries of his own. He spent time among the Native
Americans and recorded his encounters with them; he noted the
migration of birds and mentioned the variations and trends in animal
size and species diversity relative to the Southern climate. Carl
Linnaeus relied on Catesby’s drawings, notes and specimens of North
American plants for his publication, Systema Naturae in 1758
which is the basis of current biological taxonomy. Lewis and Clark
consulted Catesby’s catalog for their cross country expedition of 1804
– 1806 and one hundred years after its publication, John James Audubon
used “The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama
Islands” as a model for his enormous double elephant folio book, “The
Birds of America,” 1826 – 1838. |