Beschreibung:

Six fine watercolours of butterflies, including South American Lepidoptera, one of British swallowtail butterflies, and one of Australian locusts, early 19th century, all painted attending single plant sprigs, together six fine watercolour and gouache paintings on card, heightened with gum arabic, sheet size 26.5 x 20cm (10.5 x 8ins) and slightly smaller, mounted on thick paper album leaves, within sepia ink ruled or printed border, five carefully (but erroneously) titled in ink above 'Van Diemans Land Lepidoptera' and one 'British Lepidoptera', the five of Lepidoptera with plant title below, all within ruled frame, mount size 35.5 x 26cm (14 x 10.25ins), contemporary black frames Provenance: Private Collection, Gloucestershire. Five of the items offered here are inscribed in manuscript with the name of the plant, the first four being Australian plants: 1) 'Patersonia Glauca' with two butterflies:Historis odius and one unidentified; 2) 'Lechenaultia Formosa' with four butterflies: Episcada mira, Adelpha alala, Charaxes Ameliae [Africa] and unidentified skipper or moth; 3) 'Calostemma Purpureum' with two large butterflies: Caligo sp. and one unidentified; 4) 'Kennedia Coccinea' with four butterflies: Diaethria phlogea, Prepone dexamenis, Heliconus sp. and Noctuidae; 5) 'Ilex Aquifolium' [common holly] with two Papilio Machaon [UK]; 6) Unidentified plant [Patersonia?] with two Australian locusts. However, a specialist consultant has identified four of the images as South American butterflies on Australian plants. The watercolour of locusts is correctly identified as an Australian insect on an Australian plant, and the sixth image as British swallowtails on an Austrian holly branch. Edward Donovan was an Anglo-Irish writer, natural history illustrator, and amateur zoologist. He did not travel, but collected, described and illustrated many species based on the collections of his own and other naturalists. His best known works are An Epitome of the Natural History of the Insects of China (1798) and Insects of India, and the Islands in the Indian Seas (1800,) and Insects of New Holland, New Zealand, New Guinea, Otaheite, and Other Islands in the Indian, Southern and Pacific Oceans (1805). The incorrect matching of these largely South American butterflies with Tasmanian/Australian plants would suggest that these highly skilled, unsigned watercolours were drawn by a contemporary of Edward Donovan, possibly someone in his circle, rather than by Donovan himself. (6)