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Watercolour
Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques, born 1533 - died 1588 - Enlarge image
Watercolour
- Date:
ca. 1575 (painted)
- Artist/Maker:
Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques, born 1533 - died 1588 (painter)
- Materials and Techniques:
water-colour and body-colours
- Museum number:
AM.3267O-1856
- Gallery location:
Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E, case DP, shelf 25
Physical description
Botanical illustration of a single dragon arum flower and a tortoiseshell butterfly.
Date
ca. 1575 (painted)
Artist/maker
Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques, born 1533 - died 1588 (painter)
Materials and Techniques
water-colour and body-colours
Dimensions
Height: 10.75 in, Width: 7.50 in
Object history note
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.
Historical significance: This series of watercolours by Le Moyne are outstanding botanical illustrations, remarkable for their directness and truth to nature.
Descriptive line
A single dragon arum flower and a tortoiseshell butterfly, a sheet from a series of drawings of English flowers, fruits, etc., Jacques Le Moyne des Morgues, ca. 1575
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Paul Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida and England, vol. I, London, 1977, p. 158-159 The following is the full text of the entry: 14. Verso. Arum and Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly Plate 25a Dragon Arum, Dracunculus vulgaris Schott. The stalk is deep pink, the spadix black, the sheath of the stalk greenish white, blotched with greyish brown. Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly, Aglais urticae (L.), seen from above. The fore wings are orange and black, spotted with white at the apex, the hind wings orange and black, the front edges a dull brownish white, the body black and hairy with white segments. Watercolours and bodycolours, the white on the wing edges and body somewhat oxidised. Inscribed at the foot, Serpentaria, and above the butterfly, Tortoise shell Butterfly and numbered 26. AM.3267O-1856 LITERATURE: Savage (1923).
Spencer Savage, ‘Early botanical painters. No. 3. – Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’ in The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3rd s., vol. LXXIII (1923)
Materials
Gouache; Water-colour
Subjects depicted
Flowers; Butterfly
Collection code
PDP
