After George Dionysius Ehret
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Christopher Jacob Trew (1695-1769) (editor)
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Pair of prints - a Jamaican banana tree and a study of banana fruit and flowers, based on the original studies by George Dionysius Ehret, considered one of the greatest of 18th-century botanical artists. The bananas and flowers are shown at actual size.
Christoph Jacob Trew, a physician and botanist, was Ehret's primary patron publishing both Plantae Selectae, one of the finest ever 18th-century botanical sets in which these prints were issued, and Hortus Nitidissimis, also with fine botanical plates. Trew had for a number of years been an admirer of Ehret's work. While Ehret was working as an artist for a banker in Regensburg, Germany, he met Trew, and the two remained friends and associates for life. Ehret's work was so accomplished, that the famous botanist Linnaeus wrote to Trew that "The miracles of our century in the natural sciences are your work of Ehret's plants. [N]othing to equal them was seen in the past or will be in the future."
Ehret was born in Heidelberg, where he developed gardening skills in his youth, practicing drawing in his spare time. He moved to London in the late 1730s, establishing himself as a teacher of flower painting and botany. He painted the recently introduced exotic plants at the Chelsea Physic Garden. By 1742, Trew wrote to a friend that he already had acquired over 100 botanical studies of exotic plants by Ehret. After considerable discussion, in 1748, Johann Jacob Haid from Augsburg and his son agreed to produce the engravings from Ehret's drawings. According to botanical scholar Hunt, Ehret in his botanical works "achieve[d] realism, majesty, ineffable colour, all in one breathtaking look."
References:
Blunt, Wilfred, rev. by Stearn, William T. The Art of Botanical Illustration. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antique Collectors Club, 1994. Chapters 11-12.
Calman, Gerta. Georg Ehret, Flower Painter Extraordinary. 1977. p.97.
Coats No. 33.
Dunthorne, Gordon. Flower and Fruit Prints of the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. Their History, Makers and Uses, with a Catalogue Raisonne of the Works in Which They are Found. Washington, D.C.: Published by the Author, 1938. p. 309.
Hunt 539.
Nissen, Claus. Die Botanische Buchillustration: ihre Geschichte und Bibliographie. Stuttgart:1951-66. 1997.
Sitwell, Sacheverell. Great Flower Books, 1700-1900. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990. p.144.
Pritzel, Georg August. Thesaurus Literaturae Botanicae Omnium Gentium. Milan: 1950. 9499.
Stafleu, Frans A. and Richard S.Cowan. Taxonomic Literature. Utrecht: 1967. 2nd ed., Utrecht: 1976-1988 TL2 15.131.