"Three Herons" - Hand Watercolor Engraving by Nicolas Robert

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"Three Herons" - Hand Watercolor Engraving

"Three Herons" from a collection of the Most Rare Birds Drawn and Engraved From … Read more "Three Herons" - Hand Watercolor Engraving

"Three Herons" from a collection of the Most Rare Birds Drawn and Engraved From Life, A Natural and Rational History of the Different Birds that Inhabit the Globe by French artist Nicolas Robert (French, 1614-1685). Etched and hand painted with watercolor. The names of the birds are given in Latin and French.

Presented in a white mat.
Mat: 14"H x 18"W
Paper: 8 3/4"H x 12 1/2"W
Image: 8 1/2"H x 12"W

Nicolas Robert was a French watercolorist, draftsman and printmaker, widely regarded as the most accomplished botanical artist of the 17th century. The son of an innkeeper, he made his way to Italy, where he produced his first great work, a unique album of floral paintings called the Guirlande de Julie in 1641, which established his reputation as an artist. In 1650, Gaston d'Orléans, brother of Louis XIII commissioned a set of paintings on vellum of the birds and flowers of his menagerie and botanical garden at the Château of Blois. Over the next decade he filled five large folio volumes. Robert was appointed painter to the King by Gaston's nephew, King Louis XIV, in 1664, documenting the royal gardens. The 700 original natural history paintings he produced for Gaston d'Orléans and the royal collection became the nucleus of the famous Vélins du Muséum collection of natural history studies now in the library of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. His other crowning achievement were the 39 plates he produced for Dionys Dodart's Mémoires pour servir à L'Histoire des Plantes, a large folio published by the Royal Press, a landmark in the history of botanical illustration. See less