Description
Description of Nederlandsch Bloemwerk
These rare hand-colored engravings are from the work entitled Nederlandsch Bloemwerk Door een Gezelaschap Geleerden (translated: Dutch Flower Work Through a Company of Scholars). It was published in 1794 in Amsterdam by J. B. Elwe, for a list of only 66 subscribers, making it a delightfully rare work. While giving common sense advice on the use and culture of various garden plants including, tulips, lilies, crocus, hyacinths (double hyacinths), narcissi, roses, auriculas, anemones, carnations and hellebores, the work also incorporated insects in several of the images. The artist of these plates is unknown, though sometimes attributed to Paul Theodore von Brussel as he signed the bouquet illustrating the title page. According to Hunt, some 30 of the 53 plates show influence from the French Artist Nicolas Robert from 100 years before. "Nederlandsch Bloemwerk is a symbol and representation of the ascendancy of the Dutch nurseryman, the developer and disperser of tulips, hyacinths, and auriculas at the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time it takes a backward glance at the art of the gardener and the flower-painter of a century and a half earlier, the golden age of Tulpomania' (Hunt 733). They are on fine chain-linked, uncut paper that measures ~ 11 1/8" by 8 1/2".