First Edition with watermark and corresponding information page,
Framed (floated on rice paper) in a gold frame. One half of binding holes visible at right edge.
This extraordinary portrait of the huge bloom of the magnolia tree is a 280-year-old hand-colored print that comes to us in superb original condition. And it comes to us directly from the hands of the original artist, Mark Catesby (1682 to 1749), an intrepid explorer of the generally unknown parts of the New World in his time; a young man also possessed of an educated, artistic mind full of extraordinary curiosity. And to think that when Mr. Catesby was hard at work producing his first-of-its-kind, Mrs. Washington was busy bouncing her newborn son, George, gently upon her knee.
Mark Catesby, English by birth, first arrived in Williamsburg, the capital city of the British colony of Virginia, in 1712. He stayed with his sister Elizabeth, who was married to the Secretary of State for the Virginia colony. For the next seven years, using his sister's home as his base, Catesby began his explorations by traveling south into areas of the continent then considered dangerous to life and limb. And not just because of the presence of indigenous people, but because of the many deadly diseases then known to exist there - malaria being perhaps the most common and the most feared at the time - for which there were no known cures or even an understanding of their origins.
Catesby returned to England in 1719, where his explorations and studies were becoming well known among the members of the leading scientific organizations of the time, the highly esteemed Royal Society being one of them. With additional underwriting from these learned individuals and their privileged institutions, Catesby returned to the American colonies in 1722 to continue his work until he felt he had sufficient new knowledge and new specimens from which he could begin his intended great work, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands.
4. It is from this monumental work, the first significant attempt by any professional naturalist to depict the flora and fauna of the New World, that this magnificent print of a uniquely American flower comes to us. This epic work in its entirety was produced between 1731 and 1743 and sold by subscription, and, upon completion, the hand-colored prints together with their separate description pages, were usually bound into two very large and impressive volumes.
5. This is a first edition (1743) copy of this work, printed on hand-made, high-quality, 100 percent rag-content paper. In superb condition, as is its accompanying original description page, Mark Catesby referred to it as the Magnolia grandiflora or Laurel Tree of Carolina. This over-280-years-old print is commonly described in our time as the preeminent floral print that comes to us from Colonial America.
6. Of the 200 prints contained in the first edition, all but two were directly from the hand of Mark Catesby. The remaining two original depictions, including this enormous magnolia flower, were done at the direction of Catesby by Georg Ehret, a German botanist, entomologist, and 18th century artist renowned in his time for his portraits of botanical specimens and their endlessly varied flowers.
7. This edition, the first and only edition finished in Catesby's lifetime (1682 to 1749) and in his own hand, was the first of many subsequent editions produced well into the 19th century, it was considered that important. Catesby taught himself how to make the copper plates that transferred his images to paper, then he either personally hand-colored each print or had them colored by craft artists under his supervision.
8. The first edition is distinguished in that it is printed and hand-colored on hand-laid rag paper bearing what is known as the Strasbourg Lily watermark. In addition to subtle changes to some of the prints in subsequent editions, the watermarks used in later editions also changed.
9. In 1747, Catesby published an addendum to his original work, consisting of 20 additional prints of flora and fauna. These 20 were included in the several subsequent editions of Catesby's Natural History, all of which were published after his death in 1749.
10. Catesby's original artistic renderings still exist and are today stored in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, in England.
11. Catesby's The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, was populated with portraits of birds, fish, quadrupeds, snakes, amphibians, insects, flowers, trees, etc.; almost everything he found in his explorations and thought was new to the eyes of his patrons and subscribers back in England. When taking into consideration the time this remarkable man did this - more than 280 years ago - and across a vast ocean from his home, it can only be seen as a truly amazing accomplishment.
12. There can be no doubt that this is the kind of art that can - and will always - become the centerpiece for virtually any high class, high end, made-to-order, custom-designed interior decoration.
13. The connection between the first machine-made, wood pulp paper that only came into existence in the early 19th century, and the millions of crumbling books manufactured over the next 120 years or so, remained a mystery until sometime in the 1930s. The connection was the acids that were the result of haphazard early paper-manufacturing processes using inexpensive wood pulp. Once known, these processes were quickly remedied in most paper-manufacturing operations (newsprint is an exception) and most all the books manufactured from about 1940 on are not plagued by this insidious cancer. One of the nicest things about paper made before about 1810 is that its manufacture was an arduous hands-on process that utilized rag pulp only in which no destructive acids of any kind can be found. This is the sort of paper used by Catesby, Audubon and countless others, so there are no ticking time bombs of self-destruction hiding in the printed works of these masters.
