I’ve been away again interstate on business and one of the plusses about travelling is that I get to sit on planes, relatively undisturbed, and read for hours at a time (Australia’s a big place!). This trip I started A.C. Grayling's The Mystery of Things. This is a collection of shortish essays on a whole range of interesting, and yes sometimes mysterious, topics that are philosophical in flavour and deal with our interactions with the world and each other.
Today on the way back from Melbourne I read of the work of naturalists and artists that accompanied explorers on voyages of discovery during the period between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Grayling shortlists five voyages for special mention, however it was something else he mentioned that caught my attention.
Since childhood I’ve been fascinated by the incredibly detailed work of the artists who documented the flora and fauna of the ‘New World’ for European eyes in the days before photography. The detail in these works is extraordinary – as it had to be given that the actual specimens on which it was based may not have been collected or may have perished on the voyage home. Eager scientists in Europe would have to depend on the accuracy of the images in order to carry out their studies.
Grayling especially mentions Ferdinand Bauer who sailed with Matthew Flinders during his surveying of the coastline of Australia.
With Flinders on the Investigator went naturalist Robert Brown and the supremely gifted artist Ferdinand Bauer, who produced over 2,000 sketches of astonishing accuracy and beauty. Using a complex colour-coding system, Bauer drew from life and made his painted versions later.
I searched for this system tonight and think I’ve found an image of it. To use terminology found elsewhere in blogdom - what a wonderful analog hack.
What Bauer’s art speaks to me of is another intricate craft that has been superseded by time and technology. It may well still be practised for art’s sake but I fear the digital camera and the computer animation have relegated this extraordinary art form to the fringes of modern scientific relevance and a fate not dissimilar to many of the creatures and plants that were captured in such wonderful detail.
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