Tag: Watercolour

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Flying home: a volume of watercolours and its rather special 4,500 mile journey | Library and Archives

The scope of the Library collections at the Museum is truly international with many items already having travelled a significant distance to reach us. From the artworks of Cook’s Endeavour voyage, through to the Chinese illustrations of plants collected by John Reeves and the sixteen beautifully illustrated sketchbooks of Olivia Tonge detailing her travels in India, many of the items in our collections have undertaken and survived incredible journeys of their own just getting here.

Colour photo taken from above showing a bound manuscript volume sitting in a see through perspex book cradle. The book is sitting diagonally from bottom left to top right. The bottom left hand corner of the left face is out of the photo. Although not readable, it is clear that there is handwritten notes on the left hand page, at intervals from top to bottom. On the right hand page, in landscape, is a coloured watercolour of two small birds facing each other, sitting on a branch with leaves, only the outline is drawn in black. The bird on the left is crouched, has a light green breast, head, dark back and right wing. The left wing is not visible. The bird on the right hand side has an orange breast, dark head, back, left wing and tail. The right wing is not visible. There is a short piece of unreadable text directly underneath the image and another small drawing to the bottom right, but it is not clear what it is. To the right and underneath the perspex support, sitting on the flat cream surface, is an electronic temperature / humidity recorder. It is a small grey plastic box, with a digital display and short stubby aerial. To the left of it is come sort of small grey bowl.
Hodgson’s Birds of Nepal (Appendix 1-187) volume showing watercolour illustrations and accompanying manuscript notes

This is true of a special collection of bound volumes of watercolour illustrations of Nepalese animals that were presented to the Museum by their creator, Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800-1894) the naturalist, ethnologist and founder of the discipline of Himalaya Studies. This blog tells of a very special journey that one of the volumes recently made back to its place of origin. Continue reading “Flying home: a volume of watercolours and its rather special 4,500 mile journey | Library and Archives”

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Images of Nature: The Bauer Brothers (New Publication) | Library and Archives

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.

Picture of the book cover
The cover of the Images of Nature: The Bauer Brothers book by Paul Martyn Cooper

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.

Continue reading “Images of Nature: The Bauer Brothers (New Publication) | Library and Archives”