Botanical Painting of a Lemon Plant
The object is a painting by Rosalba M. Towne, an American artist born in 1827 who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. Towne specialized in painting flowers and plants that were mentioned in the works of Shakespeare, using the treatise “The Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare” written by Reverend Henry N Ellacombe. After her death in 1909, her paintings were discovered in Paris by Professor Oak Eames, who was a research professor of botany at Harvard University and served as the director of the Botanical Museum from 1923 to 1945. He discovered them at a bookstall along the Seine, and decided to purchase and donate the paintings to the museum.These paintings are noted as the first complete collection of botanically accurate artwork depicting the extent of Shakespeare's botanical knowledge as they are mentioned in his plays and long poems.
Thirty years later, the paintings were rediscovered by Richard Evans Schulte, who became the director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University in 1967. He found them behind a bookshelf in the department library, where it had seemed like Oak Eames had hidden and forgotten about them. Schulte decided to reproduce the painting collection as bound books and created an exhibition of the original painting in 1974 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts. The bound books were sold in the museum’s gift shop, while any unbound pages were left in the attic. Just recently, the museum chose to sell these unbound pages in the gift shop as well, where I purchased this painting in 2022.
The object I have submitted is a reprint of a lemon plant painting by Rosa Towne, assumed to be from between 1888 and 1898. It is important that this material be preserved and shared publicly as many of her works from this collection had been forgotten about and hidden for almost a century. The high-quality reproduction of her precise artwork is a significant contribution because it bridges historical and scientific accuracy with the creativity and personalized stylistic pattern of hand-painted still-life, and allows it to be reprinted and redistributed to modern audiences. Towne’s work is at an intersection between scientific illustration, literary interpretation, and decorative art, complicating the boundary between fine art and graphic design.This contribution challenges dominant narratives of graphic design history by bringing a form of visual production that can exist outside of commercial design or mass advertising.
