Our latest publication to accompany the new Images of Nature gallery exhibition ‘The Bauer Brothers’, which opens 7 November, has been published and is now available to buy onsite and online.
We are very proud to announce our newest publication Images of Nature: The Bauer Brothers. This beautiful collection of artworks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries celebrates the work of Franz and Ferdinand Bauer, two of the most accomplished natural history artists of all time.
The art of Franz and Ferdinand Bauer was praised by the poet and botanist Johann Goethe as the perfect expression of the aims of botanical illustration. This book examines the contrasting lives of Franz (1758-1840), for 50 years the resident artist at Kew Gardens, and Ferdinand (1760-1826) who led a life of travel and adventure as a natural history artist including participating in the historic voyage to Australia of HMS Investigator in the early nineteenth century.
The author Paul Martyn Cooper is one of our Special Collection Librarians and has more than twenty years worth of experience working here in the Library.
It is illustrated with images from the superb archive of Bauer drawings at the Museum Library, many of which have never been published before. These include beautiful and finely detailed watercolours of flowering plants collected from across the world, pioneering microscopical drawings of plant anatomy and pictures of the newly discovered animals from the coasts of Australia. The book is published to tie-in with our latest exhibition opening in the Images of Nature gallery at the Museum from 7 November 2015.
The book is available to purchase from the Museum shop or online shop
Look out for our forthcoming blog about the exhibition.