Nothing remains as it was.
If you know this, you can begin again,
with pure joy in the uprooting.
― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters
About the painting: A page of watercolours depicting seven plants and a dead Jay. The plants are two Purple crocuses (Crocus vernus Hill), a crocus from Susa (Crocus susianus Ker-Gawler), double-form liverwort (Hepatica nobilis Miller 'Caerulea Plena'), and two poppy anemones (Anemone coronaria L.). The Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) appears to cast a shadow on the sheet, as though a real bird has fallen onto a page of painted flowers.
About the artist: Alexander Marshal (c. 1620-1682) was a talented horticulturalist, entomologist and amateur artist. He was one of a network of gardeners working in and around London in the middle of the seventeenth century, and had links with the Tradescants (who had a garden at Lambeth) and Henry Compton (who, as Bishop of London, developed a fine garden at Fulham Palace). Marshal’s careful study of plants was combined with an examination of the science of painting and he wrote in 1667 to the Secretary of the Royal Society to discuss the methods he used for making pigments. The colours in Marshal’s paintings do indeed remain impressively bright over 350 years later.
Source: Original painting and full article as it appears on the Royal Collection Trust (UK) website here.
To download my digitally enhanced version of the above painting as a 5" x 7" @ 300 ppi JPEG, please click here.
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
