Physical description
Two sided sheet. One side with a botanical illustration of cornflower; the other with an illustration of a corn cockle.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (possibly, painted)
Date
ca.1575 (painted)
Artist/maker
Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques, born 1533 - died 1588 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour
Dimensions
Height: 27.5 cm, Width: 18.7 cm
Object history note
The drawing from this series were acquired in 1856 as one of the first purchases of the V&A, almost by accident, and solely because they were bound up in an extremely fine French late-16th-century brown calf binding.
Descriptive line
Botanical illustration of cornflower and corn cockle, a sheet from a series of drawings of English flowers, fruits etc. by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, ca. 1575
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum.London: V&A, 1985, p.46
The following is adapted from the entry:
"This is one of a remarkable series of fifty-nine paintings on thirty-three sheets of flowers, fruits, butterflies and moths, which were painted by a 16th-century artist whose life, both in the New and the Old World, had in its narrow escapes from death, and dramatic vicissitudes of fortune, the quality of an epic adventure story.
Born in Dieppe in 1533, Jacques Le Moyne De Morgues was a Hugenot. In 1564 he was selected as cartographer and artist to accompany an expedition to relieve an earlier settlement of French Hugenots in Florida. His account of the ill starred expedition makes gripping reading. It tells of warring tribes of Indians, mutiny amongst the French camp, of famine, and the providential arrival of the English privateer Sir John Hawkins with supplies. His story culminates in an exciting account of his escape from Fort Carolina during the massacre of the garrison by the Spanish fleet.
On his return to France Le Moyne was commanded by Charles X to lay before him his maps and paintings of the Indians. These pictures (in engraved form) and his story were published after his death by Theodore de Bry in 1591 in Les Grands Voyages.
In 1572 Le Moyne made his way to London to avoid the growing hostility to the Hugenots which was to culminate in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. There he was taken into service by Sir Waiter Raleigh, and came to know Sir Philip Sidney, Hakluyt, and the botanist Gervais, author of a famous Herbal.
It was in London that Le Moyne published in 1586 his own La Clef des Champs illustrated with botanical woodcuts with which the fifty-nine paintings in the Victoria and Albert Museum are closely connected. He died at Blackfriars two years later in 1588.
The Victoria and Albert Museum's water-colours by Le Moyne are outstanding botanical illustrations, remarkable for their directness and truth to nature. But ironically they were initially acquired in 1856 as one of the first purchases of the Museum, almost by accident, and solely because they were bound up in an extremely fine French late-16th-century brown calf binding. Since the discovery of the importance of the water-colours in 1922, they have been mounted separately, and can be studied in the Print Room.
Lionel Lambourne"
Paul Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida and England, vol. I, London, 1977, p. 158 The following is the full text of the entry: 13. Recto. Cornflower Plate 24b Cornflower, Centaurea cyanus L. The ray florets are dull blue, the central florets nearly black, tipped with white, the stigma whitish. Watercolours and bodycolours; the lower left-hand corner of the folio missing; 275 x 187 mm; 10 ¾ x 7 ⅜ in. Inscribed at the foot, Baptilessere, also Cornille and numbered 23. AM.3267M-1856 LITERATURE: Savage (1923). An example of the darkening with time of some of the colours used by Le Moyne. The natural colour of the cornflower is bright blue. Verso. Corn Cockle Plate 24c Corn Cockle, Agrostemma githago L. The flower, top left, inside the petals is reddish purple with deep red rays, the calyx dark green, the other flowers, seen from the outside, dull mauve. Watercolours and bodycolours. Inscribed at the foot, Nigella. , also Nielle and numbered 24. LITERATURE: Savage (1923). Some similarity to the ‘Cockle’, no. 104 of H.F.
Spencer Savage, ‘Early botanical painters. No. 3. – Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’ in The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3rd s., vol. LXXIII (1923)
Materials
Watercolour; Bodycolour
Subjects depicted
Cornflowers; Corn cockle
Categories
Drawings; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
