Pencil of Nature: The Light That Writes
Natasha D'Schommer
Oak Spring Garden Library. Rachel Lambert Mellon paid particular attention to the shadows in her garden and on her property at Oak Spring.
In April 2022, I took part In a research project at Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Library. Kay Etheridge and Henrietta McBurney were the leaders of the project-based research course, “Pioneers of Natural History Illustration,” focusing on naturalists Mark Catesby and Maria Sibylla Merian.
In my work at Oak Spring, I gather data through my camera lens. I am exploring the garden, looking for shadows and light, bringing my observations into the library and into the books themselves.
Central Pavilion, Formal Greenhouse
In St. Aubin, we meet our protagonists: the book, nature, light and shadows. Through time, the book itself becomes the artist. Nature has an incredible yearning to see itself. Shadow and light collaborate. Shadow is the muse. And as Henry Fox Talbot says, Light is the pencil of nature. The illustrations adapt and repurpose themselves into new images.
Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, Receuil de plantes copiees d’apres nature par de Saint Aubin dessinateur du Roy Louis XV (1736-1785)
Here we see a unique staining similar to an organic counterproof. The illustration reveals a shadow self: only the iron-dark paint bleeds through, leaving the perfect outline of flowers, similar to a cyanotype.
Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Her book, Photographs of British Algae: CyanotypeImpressions, was published in 1843.
Cyanotypes I composed from flowers at Oak Spring Garden, April 2022.
Capturing the wind in a 5-minute exposure cyanotype at Oak Spring Garden.
John Muir said, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” I think Muir would include the tugging of a book from its shelf and into the hands of the reader as an action with the same result.
Verso in George Edwards’ Natural History of Uncommon Birds.
In this image from George Edwards’ Uncommon Birds, we are seeing versos, the back sides of two separate illustrated pages. Each bird stands alone on its page, but from the back of the page, we see the birds finding each other in their shadows.
Verso in Maria Sibylla Merian’s Der Raupen Wunderbare und Sonderbare Blumen Mahrug.
Maria Sibylla Merian, the German-born Swiss naturalist and illustrator, identified marvelous and strange relationships between bugs and plants. She introduced butterflies, caterpillars, bees, beetles, and flies into botanical illustrations – not just any gratuitous bugs, but the specific insects and even snakes that were beneficial to that plant.
Alexander Wilson’s North American Birds.
In Alexander Wilson’s North American Birds, counter proofing has created a reverse impression on the opposite page from the original illustration. The red-brown tint to the counterproof in Wilson’s work is reminiscent of foxing. Like in many cases of foxing, the counter image does not appear to harm the integrity of the paper. This is an effect I call “beautiful damage.”
John Parkinson’s The Theatre of Plants (1640).
On this page from John Parkinson’s The Theatre of Plants, illustration bleeds through from the other side, creating a different type of layered dialogue between the pages. Notice the words The Place and The Time accentuating Parkinson’s allusion to theatre.
Counterproof in Benjamin Wilkes’ English Moths and Butterflies, 1773.
Part of my work at Oak Spring was to discover shadows in the library collection.
I inverted this counterproof from Mark Catesby’s Hortus Britanno-Americanus to reveal the shadows.
Inverted counterproofs of plums (left) and a pear and grapes (right). I composed these images from inverted shadows in a Temple & Beard seed catalogue, New York.
Inverted counterproof of Clematis Jackmanii, Temple and Beard seed catalogue. I really enjoyed working with this image, the details, the veins of the flower. This counterproof uncovers an X-ray of the original flower.
Observations at Oak Spring Garden, April 2022.
Taking pictures in the conservatory and in the rain.
The Maiden and the Unicorn by Heinz Warneke (1895-1983).
In my time at Oak Spring, I experienced the devotion that has been given to the library, the garden, the conservatory, the home, and the farm. I observed the attentive reverence offered to nature – to light and to shadow – each telling their own, separate stories. In Rachel Lambert Mellon’s sculpture in the main garden, we feel the presence of the divine in the act of nurturing nature and one another.