Strawberry and emperor moth thumbnail 1
Strawberry and emperor moth thumbnail 2
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Image of Gallery in South Kensington
Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level H , Case WD, Shelf 232

Strawberry and emperor moth

Watercolour
ca. 1568-1572 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This drawing belongs to an album of 59 botanical watercolours on paper attributed to the Huguenot artist Jacques Lemoyne de Morgues (1533-88). Some of these are double sided although the present one is single-sided and shows a wild strawberry and a female Emperor moth. Dated around 1575, the present work shows a daisy and a Lady butterfly on the recto, with pink roses on the verso. Although Lemoyne has been long known as an obscure artist providing designs for simple woodcuts, his botanical watercolours which were rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century have earned him a place in history as one of the most remarkable early botanical painters.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleStrawberry and emperor moth (popular title)
Materials and techniques
Watercolour and body-colour on laid paper
Brief description
Watercolour, A wild strawberry and a female emperor moth, attributed to Jacques Lemoyne de Morgues, French school, ca. 1575
Physical description
Recto: botanical illustration of a strawberry plant with several strawberries and an emperor moth.
Verso: blank
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 24.2cm
  • Estimate width: 26.3cm
Dimensions taken from Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800, C.M. Kauffmann, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973
Style
Marks and inscriptions
  • Female Emperor Moth (Written in pencil in the top righthand corner of the image)
  • 49 (Written in ink in top righthand corner of the image)
Gallery label
Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues about 1533-88 Wild Strawberry and Female Emperor Moth ('Fragaria vesca' and 'Saturnia pavonia') About 1575 Some of Le Moyne's drawings are part of a network of copying. The sinuous form of this wild strawberry comes from an earlier illustration by the botanist Fuchs. Le Moyne reworked it in a later watercolour and again for a woodcut in his pattern book 'La Clef des Champs' (1586. Probably France Watercolour and bodycolour V&A: AM.3267.bb-1856
Object history
Purchased in 1856 as part of a sketchbook bought for its 16th-century binding. In 1922, De Morgues's signature was discovered and the significance of the watercolours recognised. Following this, the 34 leaves with watercolours were extracted from the volume to be transferred to the Prints and Drawings department (now Museum nos. A.M.3267a – 3267hh-1856). The binding remained in the library
Historical context
The present drawing belongs to an album of 59 botanical watercolours depicted on 34 sheets of paper and attributed to Jacques Lemoyne de Morgues.
The drawings 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. Although Lemoyne has been long considered as an obscure artist providing designs for simple woodcuts, he was recognised at the beginning of the 20th century as one of the most remarkable early botanical painters.

The V&A binding and the inscriptions on the drawings in both French and Latin suggest that the series was probably made in France around 1575. Lemoyne left the Continent to London where he settled shortly before1580. The V&A album can be compared with another album, reputed to have been made around 1585 in England, and now in the British Museum.

Another group of 27 sheets stylistically close and on similar paper to the V&A watercolours appeared on the market in 2004, followed by a bound florilegium with eighty drawings in an 18th-century French mottled calf gilt and lettered ‘anno 1770’ in 2005.(See Sotheby's, New York, 21 January 2004, lots 29-55 and Sotheby's, New York, 26 January 2005, lot 46.) A highly finished group of six gouaches on vellum on blue and gold background were sold from the Korner collection in 1997 (Sotheby's, New York, January 29, 1997, lots 55-60).

The interest in plants for their medicinal properties and religious symbolism was well anchored since the Middle Ages in Western Europe. A great number of manuscripts were beautifully illuminated with flowers and plants, echoing an interest that goes back to the Antiquity. However this impressive album of botanical watercolours shows a renewed curiosity for the flora from both a scientific and an aesthetic point of view.

In this respect, Lemoyne de Morgues’ representations of plants and insects, which show a particular attention to details and a great sense of realism, can be seen as a forerunner of such projects as the Museum Chartaceum (Latin for ‘Paper Museum’), made by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657)who commissioned to minor and major artists a vast collection of drawings recording, among others, natural history subjects (see V&A E.731-1949 to E.735-1949, E.2776-1962 to E.2777-1962, E.426-2009 to E.428-2009, and E.1026-2011 – and also Royal Library, Windsor Castle, and British Museum, London).
Subjects depicted
Summary
This drawing belongs to an album of 59 botanical watercolours on paper attributed to the Huguenot artist Jacques Lemoyne de Morgues (1533-88). Some of these are double sided although the present one is single-sided and shows a wild strawberry and a female Emperor moth. Dated around 1575, the present work shows a daisy and a Lady butterfly on the recto, with pink roses on the verso. Although Lemoyne has been long known as an obscure artist providing designs for simple woodcuts, his botanical watercolours which were rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century have earned him a place in history as one of the most remarkable early botanical painters.
Bibliographic references
  • Lionel Lambourne, Portraits of Plants: Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (1533-1588), London (undated)
  • Gill Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration, London, 1995, p.50, ill. in colour.
  • Paul Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida and England, vol. I, London, 1977, p. 161 The following is the full text of the entry: 27. Stawberry and Emperor Moth Plate 30d Wild Strawberry, Fragaria vesca L. The fruits are various shades of pink, the calyces light green, the flowers white shaded with grey. Female Emperor Moth, Saturnia pavonia (L.), seen from beneath. The wings are brownish grey, darkened with fine hairs, with a broad band of dense brown towards the rear edges, the spots black surrounded by light brown, white and pink. The body is brown. Watercolours and bodycolours, with some oxidisation at the right tip of the wings, 265 x 169 mm (sight); 10 ⅜ x 6 ⅝ in. Inscribed above the moth, Female Emperor Moth and numbered 49. AM.3267BB-1856 LITERATURE: Savage (1923); V&A postcard (in colour), E. 27. The form of the plant follows closely, though not exactly, and partly in reverse, the illustration in Fuchs, De historia stirpium (1542), p. 853.
  • Spencer Savage, ‘Early botanical painters. No. 3. – Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’ in The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3rd s., vol. LXXIII (1923)
  • Gill Saunders, 100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1985, p.46.
  • Paul Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida and England, vol. I, London, 1977, p. 156 The following is the full text of the entry: 2. Recto. Daisy and Painted Lady Butterfly Plate 19 b Double Daisy, Bellis perennis L., var. hortensis L. The flowers are pink, deeper towards the yellowish centre. The Painted Lady Butterfly, Vanessa cardui (L.), seen from beneath. The wings are mottled in brown and white, deeper brown on the forward edges, the body is dark grey. Watercolours and bodycolours; 274 x 183 mm; 10 ¾ x 7 ⅛ in. Inscribed above the butterfly, The painted Lady revers’d and numbered 3. AM.3267B-1856. LITERATURE: Savage (1922), (1923). Verso. Species Rose Plate 19 c Rose, Rosa sp. The flowers are pink, paler towards the outer edges, showing yellow stamens. Watercolours touched with bodycolours. Numbered 4. LITERATURE: Savage (1922), (1923) as ‘Rosa sp.’
  • Spencer Savage, ‘The discovery of some of Jacques Le Moyne’s botanical drawings’ in The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3rd s., vol. LXXI (1922)
  • Spencer Savage, ‘Early botanical painters. No. 3. – Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’ in The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3rd s., vol. LXXIII (1923)
  • Lambourne, L., Portraits of Plants, London: V&A, 1984.
  • FOR A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SKETCHBOOK, SEE https://web.archive.org/web/20230424123753/https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-botanical-album-of-jacques-le-moyne-de-morgues
  • Bindings in NAL: https://web.archive.org/web/20230424123626/https://nal-vam.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1008049857
Other number
AM.3267BB-1856 - Incorrect number
Collection
Accession number
AM.3267BB-1856

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Record createdMarch 3, 2000
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