- Illustrations of Himalayan plants : chiefly selected from drawings made for the late J.F. Cathcart, Esq.re of the Bengal Civil Service / the descriptions and analyses by J.D. Hooker ; the plates executed by W.H. Fitch [1855] at Missouri Botanical Gardens.
- Walter Hood Finch at PlantExplorers
- Joseph Dalton Hooker - The Himalayas at PlantExplorers
- Herbal Sources of Tibetan Medicines
{plant names are in the image URLs}
I think I asked the same question about old colour illustrations (might have been some Japanese prints from dim memory) in another forum some time back and one thing mentioned that made some sense to me (and I don't think that botanical illustrations are particularly affected versus any other old colour image) was that the book is kept closed and is most likely not opened very often so it's protected from the light in that respect.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this is Missouri Bot Gardens and they are both about the most legitimate site online and they have exceptional imaging techniques. If it was any other repository I might be a little suspicious and the fact that they have such a vast collection of superb horticultural books I guess also supports the longevity of old colouring - say, after 1700 anyway.
One other example that comes to mind is , whose stunning work was more than a century before this Himalayan book.
The name that got chopped off there was Sybilla Merian.
ReplyDeleteJust by the by, I didn't adjust these images in any way, save for the 'red berry' detail - but I only hosed out a little of the background snippets. I didn't enhance otherwise.