1762
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Plantae Selectae: No. 5 - Anona is a 1762 by Georg Dionysius Ehret, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a single anona plant with delicate white flowers and dark green leaves. Its slender stems and detailed veins make the plant look almost real. Ehret made this image for a book about plants. Scientists couldn’t agree on plant names back then. His careful drawings helped everyone use the same words for each kind of plant. See how he lights the leaves? That’s called chiaroscuro. Look up Georg Dionysius Ehret (German, 1708–1770).
A major problem in horticulture was the lack of a consistent system of classification. The first successful attempt to establish a common nomenclature was in 1724 when 20 London nurserymen published a list of all plants grown in their nurseries. Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae was published in 1735; it classified 7,700 plants by their botanic structure and gave them universally applicable two-part Latin names. From then on artists had to combine scientific accuracy with artistic skill. Many of Ehret’s flower portraits were copied by printmakers and published in the great…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Georg Dionysius Ehret was a German botanist and entomologist known for his botanical illustrations.
See the richer artist page
