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The Art and Science of William Bartram

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William Bartram's love of nature led him to explore the environs of the American Southeast between 1773 and 1777. Here he collected plants and seeds, kept a journal of his observations of nature, and made drawings of the plants and animals he encountered. The completed drawings were sent to his patron in London, and these make up the bulk of the collection held at London's Natural History Museum.

The Art and Science of William Bartram brings together, for the first time, all sixty-eight drawings by Bartram held at the Natural History Museum, along with works by some of the most well-known natural history artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The volume explores Bartram's writings and artwork and reveals how influential he was in American science of the period. Bartram was an inspiration to a whole generation of young scientists and field naturalists. He was an authority on the birds of North America and on the lifestyle, culture, and language of the indigenous people of the regions through which he traveled. His work influenced Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other writers and poets throughout the past two hundred years, and his drawings reveal an ecological understanding of nature that only truly developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century.


Contents

Acknowledgments

Chronology

Prologue: Explorer, Naturalist, and Artist

Part I: Formation

1. Plant Hunting and the Seed Trade

2. The Merchant’s Apprentice

3. Cape Fear and Competition

Part II: Experience

4. Travels in Florida with the King’s Botanist

5. Finding a Patron

Part III: Independence

6. Travels: Revisiting Old Haunts and Discovering New Ones

7. Encounters and Observations

8. The Arcadian Dream

9. Describing, Classifying, and Naming

Part IV: Influence

10. American Science Comes of Age: Ornithology

11. American Science Comes of Age: Entomology

12. Following in Bartram’s Footsteps

Epilogue: Contentment and Serenity

List of Drawings

Glossary of Names

Bibliography

Index



“Judith Magee, in her handsome book, The Art and Science of William Bartram, gives a delightful overview of Bartram and his contributions to the natural history of his time, especially in his pioneering drawings and watercolors, in which he portrayed behavior, habitat, and the relationships among individual species.”

—Patricia Tyson Stroud, Winterthur Portfolio

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