Empire's Nature: Mark Catesby's New World Vision: Fid-Bau Portal

Empire's Nature: Mark Catesby's New World Vision

Tucker, Jennifer

In 1712, the English naturalist Mark Catesby (1682–1749) traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia, to observe the natural productions of the southern colonies of North America — in his words, to satisfy a ‘passionate desire of viewing as well the Animal as Vegetable productions in their Native Countries; which were Strangers to England.’ Catesby's close observations and direct representations of plant and animal life during two trips to the southern American colonies and the West Indies between 1712 and 1726 formed the basis for his monumental study, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, completed in 1747. The first major illustrated natural history of the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, The Natural Historyassumed immediate importance as a reference point for British and Continental naturalists who were trying to order the natural world according to eighteenth-century taxonomic systems. The publication's magnificent plates and verbal descriptions of the flora and fauna of the New World were a source of inspiration to American artist-naturalists such as William Bartram and John James Audubon. It became the foundation of British and American nature illustration in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.