Almond plant
1568
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1568
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Almond plant is a 1568 watercolor by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, a Byzantine icon painting work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This painting shows a simple branch with almond leaves and three unripe almonds. The leaves are painted in soft green and brown, while the nuts are a muted grayish-blue. The background is plain white, keeping all focus on the plant. The artist used watercolor to capture fine details, like the tiny veins in the leaves. This style was common in Renaissance botanical studies. Look up Renaissance next to see how artists studied nature this way.
The drawing depicts an almond plant executed in watercolour on a single sheet, with the reverse side left blank. Part of a 59-plant album of botanical watercolours attributed to Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, it was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1856 as part of a bound volume noted for its fine 16th-century French calf binding rather than for its artistic contents. Stylistic and inscription evidence suggests the album was likely produced in France around 1575, before the artist relocated to London shortly before 1580. The series reflects a growing European interest in…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (French pronunciation: ; c. 1533–1588) was a French artist and member of Jean Ribault's expedition to the New World. His depictions of Native American life and culture, colonial life, and…
See the richer artist page
