Maria Sybilla Merian

MERIAN, Maria Sibylla (1647-1717). Erucarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis. Amsterdam: Johannes Oosterwijk, [1718]. 3 parts in one volume, 4° (188 x 143 mm). Hand-coloured engraved allegorical frontispiece by Simon Schijnvoet dated 1717, engraved armorial headpiece opening dedication, 3 sectional titles and 149 (of 150) hand-coloured engraved plates. (Last plate in facsimile, some light browning, slight marginal damspaining to last 14 leaves.) 19th-century brown calf (rebacked). Provenance: T.Harrison (signature on front endpaper dated 1820) -- J. Gough (signature on front endpaper) -- Harry Harnold Arnbarrow (armorial bookplate). FIRST LATIN EDITION of Sybilla Merian's Raupenbuch, a work with a complex publishing history. Although the Erucarum ortus appeared one year after her death, Merian was very much involved in its publication. From at least 1705 she had intended to issue her work on European insects in Latin and Dutch, completing it with a third part. Ill health at the end of her life delayed publication of the third part until just after her death, but the complete Latin edition followed only one year later. It was printed by Johannes Oosterwijk, an Amsterdam publisher who acquired all the plates and texts of Merian's works from her daughter, Dorothea, before she left Amsterdam to take up residence in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1717. Nissen BBI 1342; Dunthorne 205; Hunt 483; Landwehr 135.

Lot Description Maria Sibylla Merian (Frankfurt 1647-1717 Amsterdam) An Iguana (Iguana iguana) and a Coral snake (Elapidae micrurus) on a tree stump black lead, watercolor, bodycolor on vellum 13½ x 17¾ in. (342 x 450 mm.) Lot Notes The scale and subject matter of this drawing suggest that it was either drawn while Merian was in Surinam in 1699-1701, or was based on sketches made during that period. A very similar drawing of a Surinam lizard, which measures 13 x 17 in. (329 x 430 mm.) and which is closely related to plate 70 from the second edition of Merian's Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, published in 1719, was sold at Sotheby's, London, 7 July 1999, lot 37. Although the present drawing does not relate specifically to one of the illustrations in the Metamorphosis... the composition is very close to plate 69 from the 1719 edition, which shows a crocodile fighting a snake (fig. 1). Maria Sibylla Merian was one of the more extraordinary natural history painters active in Northern Europe in the period. A ground-breaking naturalist and taxonomist, businessperson and traveller, her drawings also show a strong aesthetic sense, a profile made all the more remarkable given the obstacles placed before a woman intent on following such a route in the early 18th Century. She travelled to Surinam in June 1699 with no official commission or support, and accompanied only by her younger daughter Dorothea Maria. The journey resulted in a large number of studies and finished bodycolors on vellum, many of which are now in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg (K. Wettengl, ed., Maria Sibylla Merian, 1647-1717, Artist and Naturalist, Frankfurt, 1998, nos. 127-146). The first edition of the Metamorphosis... was published in 1705, with explanatory texts by Caspar Commelin, Director of the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens. The subjects of the sixty plates, as the title suggested, was principally with the insect life of South America. An expanded edition was published in 1719, including the illustrations of a crocodile and a lizard mentioned above, but the second volume, promised in the introduction to the 1705 edition and which was to have expanded the subjects to snakes, lizards and other reptiles, did not appear. It seems reasonable to suppose that the present drawing might have been drawn in preparation for that second volume. The subjects need not have been planned by Merian while in Surinam, as she brought back to Amsterdam quantities of natural history specimens with which to continue her studies. Her entrepreneurial instincts were also finely tuned: a letter written from Amsterdam in October 1702 records her negotiations with a gentleman collector for the sale of '34 animals in liquid, listed as follows, which cost 20 f[lorins] for the lot: 1 crocodile, 2 large snakes, 18 of the same, small, 11 iguanas, 1 gecko, 1 small turtle...' (K. Wettengl, ed., op. cit., p. 265).

detailed description de europische insecten. amsterdam: j.f. bernard, 1730 first folio edition, folio (514 x 355mm.), half title, title printed in red and black with engraved vignette, 184 hand-coloured engraved plates on 47 leaves, contemporary calf, binding neatly rebacked provenance ign nieuwenhuis, inkstamp on half-title

bears inscriptions in pencil lower left: maria sevilla 1661 bears inscriptions in pencil lower left: maria sevilla 1661 and lower right: maria sevilla merian 1661, and numbering 29 in brown ink in the upper right corner outside the double framing lines watercolour and touches of gouache over black chalk, on vellum

Maria Sybilla Merian (Frankfurt 1647-1717 Amsterdam) Still life with a Bee-eater perched a branch arranged in a Delft bowl with cherries, pears, apples, peaches and figs signed (?) 'M S. Merian' and with number '41' black lead, watercolor, bodycolor, heightened with gum arabic, on vellum 14 x 16¾ in. (256 x 425 mm.) Lot Notes Although better known for her more scientific drawings (see the previous lot in this sale), the present work shows Maria Sibylla Merian's mastery of the still life tradition, not least in its close relationship with compositions by artists such as Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670). A similarly arranged Still life with fruit is in a private collection (K. Wettengl, ed., Maria Sibylla Merian, 1647-1717, Artist and Naturalist, Frankfurt, 1998, p. 75. fig. 41).