As Far as the Eye can See | Two Views of Nature
This month our Hon. Curator of Artefacts, Glenn Benson FLS, looks at the depiction of nature through two small landscapes in the Society’s collection.
Published on 7th November 2024
Depictions of the natural world run through the Linnean Society’s collections, some are showcased in our current exhibition Still Life: Depicting Nature from Woodcuts to X-Rays and our staircase display of natural history images Natural History Prints. Many more can be found in the Society Library and Archive, including two small landscape drawings.
It's hard to know just when we as a species started to create images of the natural world for pleasure. One of oldest depictions of an artistic landscape dates to 1500 BCE, but the first use of the word “landscape” referring to a form of art dates to 1598 (OED).
“There has never been an age, however rude or uncultivated, in which the love of landscape has not in some way been manifested…”
Heathland
Heathland is one of the rarest habitats in the UK: approximately 85% of this form of landscape has been lost over the past 150 years. This c.1918 watercolour by Stephen John Batchelder (1849-1936) depicts Mousehold Heath on the edge of the City of Norwich in Norfolk in the east of England. The heath covers an area of 88 hectares, but it once extended much further.
Batchelder’s painting gives prominence to a characteristic plant of UK heath habitat, Gorse (Ulex). Also known as Furse, the plant was named by Linnaeus, his type specimen is in the Linnaean Herbarium held by the Society - Ulex europaeus.
"Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze".
The Founder, and first President, of The Linnean Society of London, Sir James Edward Smith, botanist, (1759-1828) was born in Norwich, and we have evidence that he botanised on Mousehold Heath from the specimens he collected. They can be viewed here: item matches "mousehold".
On the back of the framed watercolour there is a quotation from Smith in which he reminisces about exploring nature as a child, and tugging on “Wild Succory” (Chicory, Cichorium intybus).
"Mousehold Heath, Norwich. "From the earliest period of my recollection when I can just remember tugging ineffectually with all my infant strength at the tough stalks of the wild succory on the chalky hills about Norwich, I have found the study of nature an increasing source of unalloyed pleasure, and a consolation and a refuge under every pain" Sir James Edward Smith, the founder of the Linnean Society. Presented by S.J. Batchelder F.L.S."
Mountain
“…although mountains make up just around 25% of Earth’s land area, they are home to more than 85% of the world’s species of amphibians, birds, and mammals, many of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world.”
We know very little about this “mountainscape”, other than it was executed by Leonard Jenyns, later Leonard Blomefield, (1800-1893) and uses the medium of fossil sepia.
“An indurated black animal substance, like that in the ink-bag of the cuttle-fish, occurs in the lias at Lyme Regis...It is nearly of the colour and consistence of jet, and very fragile, with a bright splintery fracture; its powder is brown, like that of the painter's Sepia it occurs in single masses, nearly of the shape and size of a small gall-bladder....”
Palaeontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847) was the first person to identify the source of this fossil ink as deriving from a belemnite, an extinct cephalopod from the Jurassic and Cretaceous period (c.200-65.5 mya) whose closest modern relatives are squids and cuttlefish. Anning and her fellow palaeontologists, Elizabeth Philpot (1779-1857) and Anna Maria Pinney (1812-1861), experimented with mixing the ground fossil ink with water to reconstitute it into medium with which to make drawings of their fossil finds.
But what of the artist, Leonard Jenyns, a clergyman naturalist? He is perhaps best known for turning down the opportunity to be the naturalist on the second voyage of HMS Beagle, and recommending the post go to Charles Darwin (1809-82). He wrote in his diary of 1831:
“This year I had the offer of accompanying Capt. Fitzroy, as Naturalist, in the Beagle, on his voyage to survey the coasts of S. America, afterwards going round the globe: - declined the appointment wc was afterwards given to Charles Darwin Esq. of Xts' College Cambridge."
Jenyns was a founding member of the Ray Society, and the Zoological Society of London, a member of both the Society of Entomologists of London and the Geological Society of London. Most importantly, of course, he was a Fellow of The Linnean Society of London; in 1892 the Society honoured the occasion that he had been a Fellow for 70 years.
Can you help us?
If you can identify the location depicted in Leonard Jenyns’s landscape, please do let us know.
“Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line, that which is conquered, conquers at the same time.”
Sources / further information:
Mousehold Heath : About Mousehold Heath | About Mousehold Heath | Norwich City Council
Mousehold Mill : Norfolk Mills - Sprowston post mill
Fossil sepia ink: The Geological Society and The Life of Mary Anning: The Pioneering Female Paleontologist of Lyme Regis
Mountains: Mountains Journey
