A Sheet of Studies of Flowers: A Rose, a Heartsease, a Sweet Pea, a Garden Pea, and a Lax-flowered Orchid

Born in Dieppe, a center for cartography and manuscript illumination, Le Moyne de Morgues emigrated to London, probably following the Huguenot massacres of 1572. This sheet of flower studies belongs to a group which has recently come to light. They are stylistically similar to a set of 59 watercolors in the Victoria and Albert Museum which bear inscriptions in French and Latin and are assumed therefore to date from Le Moyne de Morgues’s French period.

Sixteenth-century French botanical and natural history drawings are very rare. This sheet of studies and the Kingfisher on a Branch (2004.77) acquired at the same time were the first works of this type to enter the Museum’s collection. If the Medieval interest in plants revolved around their medicinal properties and religious symbolism, the Renaissance saw a burgeoning interest in the cultivation and representation of plants both as scientific inquiry and as objects of beauty. Le Moyne de Morgues’s watercolors follow in this vein, combining highly naturalistic detail with exquisite color harmonies and a playful sense of mise-en-page.

Perrin Stein, May 2014