Ferdinand Bauer: "the Leonardo of natural history illustration"

Ferdinand Lucas Bauer (January 20, 1760-March 17, 1826) was born in Feldsberg, Moravia (now Valtice, Czech Republic), as the youngest son of Lucas Bauer, court painter to the Prince of Liechtenstein, Joseph Wenzel I (August 9, 1696-February 10, 1772). Ferdinand’s father passed away while Ferdinand was still a baby, leaving behind five other children and a widow, Therese.

Codex Liechtenstein: First botanical illustrations by Bauer prodigies

Ferdinand and two brothers --- Franz Andreas (March 14, 1758-December 11, 1840) and Joseph Anton (1756-1831) --- were engaged, beginning in 1770, by Norbert Boccius (1729-1806), botanist-physician Prior of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God in Feldsberg, to paint miniature watercolor illustrations of approximately 3,100 plants, including native flora of Lower Austria (in northeastern Austria) and of Moravia (in southeastern Czech Republic). The illustrations, totalling 2,748, were ultimately published in the fourteen-volume Liber Regni Vegetabilis (“Book of the Plant Kingdom”). Most of volumes 1 through 8, published from 1776 to 1793, respectively, are attributed to the Bauer brothers.

In 1799, the floral masterpiece became known as Codex Liechtenstein with its presentation by Norbert Boccius to Prince Aloys I of Liechtenstein (May 14, 1759-March 24, 1805). The close relationship between the House of Liechtenstein and the Hospitaller Order dates back to 1605 when Prince Karl I of Liechtenstein (July 30, 1569-February 12, 1627) established the monastery and hospital in Feldsberg as the first branch of the Order north of the Alps. Codex Liechtenstein was kept in the royal family's Garden Palace (Gartenpalais) in Vienna until around 1938, when, in the tenuous events leading to the outbreak of the Second World War (September 1, 1939-September 2, 1945), it --- along with other treasures in the Princely Collections (Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein) --- was smuggled for safekeeping to Vaduz Castle (Schloss Vaduz) in the eponymous capital of the Principality of Liechtenstein (Fürstentum Liechtenstein).

Based in Vaduz Castle, the Princely Collections are displayed partially in the Liechtenstein Art Museum (Kunstmuseum) and partially in Vienna, where the Liechtenstein Museum reopened in the Garden Palace on March 29, 2004. Presently Codex Liechtenstein is held in the permanent collection of the Liechtenstein Museum.

Icones Plantarum Rariorum: Ferdinand and Franz in Vienna

In 1780 Ferdinand and the middle son, Franz Andreas, moved to Vienna, where they studied at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Art) and were directed in botanical taxonomy (Greek: τάξις, taxis, "arrangement" + νομία, nomia, "method"), microscopy, and landscape painting by (Baron) Nikolaus von Jacquin (February 16, 1727-October 26, 1817), Director of the Royal Botanical Garden at Schönbrunn (“beautiful spring”) Palace, the Habsburg (1278-1918) dynasty’s summer residence, and Professor of Botany and Chemistry at the University of Vienna (Universität Wien), the oldest continuously operating university in the German-speaking world, having been founded in 1365 by Duke Rudolf IV (November 1, 1339-July 27, 1365) of the House of Habsburg.

More importantly, Ferdinand and Franz participated with two other botanical draughtsmen, Johannes Scharf (1765-1794) and Josef Hofbauer (1752-1809), in the illustration of Professor Jacquin’s three volume Icones Plantarum Rariorum (“Illustrations of Rare Plants”), which features 648 hand-colored copper engravings. Volume I was compiled from 1781 to 1786, and Volumes II and III were completed between 1786 and 1793. The drawings, which are unsigned, frustrate attribution, although Ferdinand only participated until 1786 while Franz continued until 1788. Thus, Ferdinand's endeavors probably are restricted to the first volume.

Numbered color chart: Painting by numbers

In the late eighteenth century natural history illustrators selected from three strategies for recording colors in preliminary sketches for their drawings:

• Thorough written description;
• Small painted portions of differently colored individual parts;
• Abbreviated or coded descriptions, e.g., numerical references to a color chart.

These strategies allowed illustrators to refine their drawings at their leisure, which was particularly helpful for sketches executed en pleine air ("in the open air"), in field work, especially on expeditions abroad.

During their stay in Vienna, Ferdinand and Franz were definitely referring to a numbered color chart, which is believed to have been used, and probably devised, by the Bauer brothers back in Feldsberg. The Bauer color chart, which has been reconstructed by comparison of the Bauers' coded pencil sketches with the completed body-color drawings, has been determined to contain 140 enumerated color shades, tints, and tones.Tints lighten a particular hue, or color, through mixture with white; shades darken a particular hue through mixture with black; tones change a particular hue through mixture with black and white. Other gradations are achieved through mixture with complementary or adjacent colors in the color sphere.

Library Archives of Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid (Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid): Possibly long-lost Bauer color chart

Inserted into the midst of Systema Colorum Tabulare, a notebook by Bohemian explorer-naturalist Thaddäus Haenke (December 6, 1761-November 14, 1816), is a color chart, measuring as a perfect square at 4.64 by 4.64 inches (118 by 118 millimeters) and bearing handwritten numbers that have been matched to numerals entered by Ferdinand on his sketches. Specifically, Ferdinand's idiosyncratic addition of a dot, in a superscript or other odd location, after the number 9. Moreover, the 140 swatches, which match the color scheme evinced in the Bauer brothers' Feldsberg and Vienna drawings, has been dated to before 1779.

Ferdinand's refined color charts: Increasing to 250 for the eastern Mediterranean and to over 1000 for Australia

Comparison of Ferdinand's sketches with final body-color drawings for his two major expeditions reveals continuous refinement of his color chart. Eastern Mediterranean flora necessitated a color chart of 250 shades, tints, and tones. Australia's uniquely spectacular flora expanded the code to 999 numbers plus added letters.

Flora Graeca: the "Mona Lisa" of botanical illustration

Ferdinand’s career as expeditionary artist began, upon Professor Jacquin’s recommendation, in the retinue of Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford John Sibthorp (October 28, 1758-February 8, 1796) during his faunal and floral tour of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean from March 1786 to December 1787.

Settling afterwards in Oxford, England, Ferdinand devoted the one and one-third decades remaining in the eighteenth century to illustrating other projects while finalizing his massive output from the expedition, which consisted of:

• 1,000 colored drawings of plants;
• 363 of animals;
• 131 of landscapes.

With John Sibthorp’s descriptions illustrated by 966 color engravings based on Ferdinand’s accurately executed and colored drawings, Flora Graeca was released in ten volumes over a span of more than three decades, from 1806 to 1840.

Subsequently regarded as one of the most magnificent botanical publications, Flora Graeca cost the colossal sum of over £620 to print the twenty-five copies that were released. Although considered at the time to be a commercial failure, the timeless scientific value of Flora Graeca was indisputable. The amazing exactitude of even the minutest details of form and the breathtaking verisimilitude (Latin: verum, "truth" + similis, "similar") of color nuances, sustained throughout the work in every luminous drawing, have instilled over the intervening centuries consistent awe at Ferdinand's indefatigable genius.

Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae: Incomparable artistry of the first detailed natural history of Australia

Ferdinand next was selected by botanist-naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (February 13, 1743-June 19, 1820) as botanical draughtsman-naturalist’s assistant to Scottish botanist Robert Brown (December 21, 1773-June 10, 1858) for the circumnavigation of Australia (then known as New Holland) commanded by Captain Matthew Flinders (March 16, 1774-July 19, 1814), navigator and cartographer extraordinaire. Setting sail from Portsmouth on England's south coast on July 18, 1801, H.M. Sloop Investigator reached King George Sound, on the south coast of the present state of Western Australia, in December 1801.

Most charming faunal discovery: Koalas

The first illustration of koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) is attributed to Ferdinand, who made sketches of specimens from Mount Kembla (then known as Hat Hill by settlers) in the Illiwarra district of New South Wales, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Sydney. Sketched in summer 1803, Ferdinand's charmingly accurate watercolors were completed in London around 1811.

The rigors of the expedition took their toll on Investigator, which was condemned as unseaworthy two years later after the beleaguered sloop limped into Port Jackson, Sydney’s natural habor. Robert Brown and Ferdinand wisely chose to headquarter in Sydney while Captain Flinders prepared to journey back to England to obtain a replacement for Investigator but ended up being detained for six and a half years, from December 17, 1803 until June 1810, as a prisoner of the French during the Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815) on the island of Mauritius off the southeast coast of Africa in the southwest Indian Ocean. Ferdinand and Robert travelled extensively to partake of and record the lush biodiversity, not only of the fascinating continent, but also of such alluring neighbors as Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island.

By the time that Ferdinand and Robert finally sailed for England from Sydney on May 23, 1805, Ferdinand had amassed 2,073 minutely detailed sketches. In England, Ferdinand focused on doing all of the color engravings of his Australian sketches himself for his botanical record of the expedition. As observed by his brother, Franz, who served for fifty years as the first botanical illustrator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew:

"Ferdinand could not find people capable either of engraving or colouring the plates properly and consequently obliged to execute every part of the work with his own hands thus occupying far too much time. Very few indeed coloured copies has he been able to prepare and sell."

Eventually, only fifty copies were printed of Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae (“Illustrations of the Flora of New Holland”), which was published in three parts from 1806 to 1813.

Pastoral beauty of the Vienna Woods

Returning to Vienna in August 1814, Ferdinand settled in Hietzing (now a district in the western sector of Vienna) near two refreshing natural sites, the Royal Botanical Garden at Schönbrunn and the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald). The next eleven and one-half years were devoted to his beloved painting and to excursions to the Austrian Alps and the surrounding countryside.

In his will, signed in poignantly tremulous handwriting on March 12, 1826, Ferdinand appointed three of his brothers as heirs --- Johann (born 1754), Joseph, and Franz --- and he bequeathed his library and his microscope to botanist Heinrich Wilhelm Schott (January 7, 1794-March 5, 1865), who later, in 1845, became director of the Schönbrunn gardens. Ferdinand's estate included a valuable home as well as a London bank account.

Ferdinand passed away less than a week later and was laid to rest in Hietzing's cemetery, which is no longer in existence. In fact, nothing remains to indicate the location of Ferdinand's grave. Moreover, no portrait appears to have ever been drawn of this exceptional artist.

Legacy: "the Leonardo of natural history illustration"

Today, most of Ferdinand’s watercolors are held in London’s British Museum of Natural History. Most of Ferdinand’s drawings are held either in Vienna’s Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum) or in the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University.

Ferdinand's artistry has always enjoyed the highest estimation of colleagues and botanists. Named in Ferdinand's honor by Captain Flinders, Cape Bauer on the Gibson Peninsula in South Australia, near Streaky Bay, is ruggedly picturesque exhibiting a sparkling palette of ever-changing colors in the exuberant interaction of land, sea, and sky. Authentically capturing the cape's beauty would require the full extent of Ferdinand's precise color chart. Native Australian species honoring Ferdinand include:

• Eucalyptus baueriana (round leaf box or blue box eucalyptus);
• Grevillea baueri (Bauer's Grevillea).

Public recognition of Ferdinand's artistry, especially within its Australian context, occurred with two recent exhibitions. From April 27 through July 19, 1998, an exhibition at the National Library Gallery in the national capital of Canberra, “An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora and Fauna Drawings, 1801-1820, of Ferdinand Bauer,” highlighted the exquisite artistry of Ferdinand’s incomparable, monumental contributions to Australia’s natural history. From February 15 to April 21, 2002, Ferdinand's dazzling botanical and zoological depictions were included in an exhibit at Adelaide's Art Gallery of South Australia, "The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages."

Christened by renowned Australian art historian-critic Bernard William Smith (born October 3, 1916) as

“the supreme botanical draughtsman, the Leonardo of natural history illustration,”

Ferdinand displayed throughout his career amazing patience and perception in his dedication to producing scientific illustrations of the highest, most precise quality. All who knew him respected his quiet, unassuming devotion to the full expression of his God-given talents and appreciated his disciplined, amiable personality. Ferdinand's prodigious, spectacular output, much of which was never published, fortunately has been largely preserved.

An encounter with Ferdinand Bauer's artistry promises an impressive display of glorious perfection.

This hub is dedicated to the memory of Ferdinand Bauer.

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Copyright Thursday, June 16, 2011 by Derdriu