William Turner, Naturalist

Posted on 08/09/2018 by carolinemmurray

I have mentioned before Dr Richard Pulteney (1730–1801), the sole survivor of eleven children from an Old Anabaptist family near Loughborough, Leicestershire, who was apprenticed to an apothecary and then set up as an apothecary and surgeon in Leicester. After various vicissitudes (partly caused by potential patients being put off by his dissenting background), he settled in 1765 in Blandford Forum, Dorset, where he became a popular physician, though he never ceased to regret that he could not devote all his time to botany. Continue reading →

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Plant of the Month: August 2018

Posted on 27/08/2018 by carolinemmurray

This month, I give you Gladiolus murielae, for no better reason (or, in my opinion, the extremely cogent reason) that I have, after several years of trying, actually got it to flower this year! Admittedly, one flower and one bud out of twelve corms is not usually a reason for wild celebration, but it’s much better than the zero I usually achieve. Continue reading →

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Enter by the Founder’s

Posted on 26/08/2018 by carolinemmurray

… and exit by the gift shop. You can of course, alternatively, enter via the Courtyard, which takes you through/past the gift shop first, on your way to the café. Cambridge friends will realise that I am taking about the Fitzwilliam Museum, of which the Founder’s Entrance has just reopened after several months of restoration, first of the portico and then of the great dome above the entrance hall. At the same time, a massive but delicate cleaning of the interior has taken place, so that all the gold leaf on the walls and ceiling is glittering like new. Continue reading →

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Object of the Month: August 2018

Posted on 10/08/2018 by carolinemmurray

I was recently trying to find out who in Cambridge (apart from the Polar Museum) has any scrimshaw, and was most intrigued to discover – as well as, naturally, bone and ivory carvings – Jane Scrimshaw, immortalised by John Faber the Elder (another artist of whom I had never heard) at the age of 127. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bibliography, Biography, Cambridge, History, London, Museums and Galleries, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Doomed to Find a Premature Grave

Posted on 06/08/2018 by carolinemmurray

These portentous words appear in the introduction to the 1834 English edition of Letters from India by the French natural historian Victor Jacquemont (1801–32), ‘Travelling Naturalist to the Museum of Natural History, Paris’. If his name is remembered now in Britain, it is probably for the western Himalayan birch, Betula utilis var. jacquemontii, named by Édouard Spach in 1841, which interestingly does not appear in this late nineteenth-century list of the plants named in his honour. Continue reading →

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Plant of the Month: July 2018

Posted on 27/07/2018 by carolinemmurray

I had vaguely hoped that during my recent sojourn in Florida I might see a catalpa in (almost) its native habitat. Its usual southernmost range is further north in the state, but I had plans to visit botanic gardens, until the Son and Heir looked at me pityingly and pointed out that, with my allergy to heat, I wouldn’t be able to go until about 11 p.m., by which time they would be closed. (And, in fact, it was too bloomin’ hot at 11 p.m., even if they had been open.) Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliography, Biography, Botany, Cambridge, Gardens, History, London, Natural history, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Object of the Month: July 2018

Posted on 18/07/2018 by carolinemmurray

The Tampa Museum of Art is a high-ceilinged box near the Hillsborough River, its air-conditioning creating blessed coolness. When I visited the other day, it had exhibitions (largely drawn from its permanent collections) including ‘Inspired by Nature: Vases, Birds, & Flowers’ and ‘Having a Ball: Striking Portraits from America’s Pastime’ showing the work of George Sosnak (1924–92), a folk art painter who immortalised significant baseball moments onto baseballs using Indian ink. Continue reading →

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(Yet) Another Artist Of Whom I’d Never Heard

Posted on 05/07/2018 by carolinemmurray

Well, had you (assuming, of course, that you are not an expert in eighteenth-century French flower paintings) heard of Gerard van Spaendonck? You will gather from his name that he was not French – he was born in 1746, in Tilburg now ‘wool capital of the Netherlands’, but then part of the Duchy of Brabant, the debatable land tussled over by for two centuries by France, Spain and the Dutch Republic. As with tapestry weaving, flower painting in France was boosted by talent from further north: in 1769 Spaendock arrived in Paris, and within five years had become miniature painter to Louis XVI. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Botany, Cambridge, France, History, Museums and Galleries, Natural history, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Object of the Month: June 2018

Posted on 29/06/2018 by carolinemmurray

This fire screen, standing 104 cm (3 ft 5 ins) tall, must in the summer have graced fireplace of a well-to-do eighteenth-century individual, probably in France. When I first noticed it, I thought it was embroidered, perhaps by a daughter of the house, but on closer inspection, and after looking it up on the Fitzwilliam Museum‘s ‘Search the Collections‘ page, I discovered that it was woven in the tapestry manufactory of Beauvais, and indeed that Beauvais tapestry is in fact a Thing. Continue reading →

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The Emperor Diverts Himself At Tennis

Posted on 18/06/2018 by carolinemmurray

One tends not to think of Charles V as a jolly type. Admittedly, it would have been difficult for him to have been as gloomy as his son, and heir to the Spanish Empire, Philip II (‘horrible, and holy’ as Lytton Strachey later remarked), but his job as the firm-handed ruler of about half of the known world and claimant to most of the rest must have been rather tiring, and it is perhaps not surprising that he eventually retired to a monastery. Continue reading →

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