Workshop: The Hand-Colouring of Natural History Illustrations in Europe, 1600–1850
Wednesday 26. February 2025 – Thursday 27. February 2025
Hybrid Workshop at the University of Konstanz and Online
Universitätsstraße 10, 78457 Konstanz, Building C, Room C 423
Organised by: Joyce Dixon (independent) and Giulia Simonini (Technische Universität Berlin)
participant registration: email lea.stengel@tu-berlin.de

Description
From the first instances of coloured engravings depicting botanical and zoological subjects, the usefulness and effectiveness of the printed image was transformed. In the seventeenth century the practice of hand-painting prints in watercolour was pioneered in luxurious and costly works such as Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eytettensis (1613). A century later this technique allowed for the publication of Maria Sibylla Merian’s exquisite Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705), and the first British collection of hand-coloured zoological engravings, A Natural History of English Insects (1714–1720) by Eleazar Albin. Colour, pictorially represented, had become crucial to the project of natural knowledge-making: as Mark Catesby commented in 1731, “a clearer Idea may be conceiv’d from the Figures of Animals and Plants in their proper Colours, than from the most exact Description without them”.
The proliferation of hand-coloured impressions continued into the nineteenth century and yielded a highly-productive cottage industry. Even with the advent of colour printing, chromatic details of biological subjects were usually finished by hand. Yet despite their vital role in the formation and dissemination of natural knowledge, the activities of hand-colourers – known also as “colourists”, “afzetters” (in Dutch) and “Illuminist” (in German) – remain poorly understood.
This hybrid workshop will explore from different perspectives how and for what purposes printed illustrations of natural history books were hand-coloured. A special focus of the workshop will be the activities of hand-colourers, their identities and workshop practices.
Programme
Day 1: 26 February 2025
9:00–9:30 | Arrival and registration |
9:30–10:15 | Introduction / Round table |
10:15–10:30 | Coffee break |
10:30–12:00 | Panel 1: Colourists Mario Dominik Riedl, Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel, Leah Karas (Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna) “The Role of Child Labour in Natural History Illustration” Joyce Dixon (Independent) “‘A School of Females’: Hand-Colourers in the Edinburgh Studio of William Home Lizars” Luc Menapace (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) “The Hand-Colouring of Natural History Illustrations in Paris in the first Half of the ninetheenth Century” |
12:45–13:30 | Lunch break (for speakers only) |
13:30–15:30 | Panel 2: Capturing Changeable Colours Cynthia Kok (Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)) “Investigating Iridescence: Mother-of-Pearl in Early Modern Natural Illustrations” Christine Kleiter (Universität Basel) “How to Represent Iridescent Feathers in Hand-Coloured Prints? Colouring Practices in Pierre Belon’s L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555)” Paul Martin (University of Bristol) “Accuracy and Consistency in Colouring of Antiquarian Ichthyology Engravings” |
15:30–15:45 | Coffee break |
15:45–17:45 | Panel 3: Colours in Botanical Illustrations Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)) “Which Colour Comes First? Hand-Colouring Gradations on Plants in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” Magdalena Grenda-Kurmanow (Academy of Fine Arts Warsaw) “Ultimate Documentation. Between a Plant Illustration and a Botanical Specimen” Eszter Csillag (HKBU Jao Tsung I Academy of Sinology) “Michael Boym’s Hand-Coloured Images in Flora sinensis (Vienna, 1656)” |
19:30 | Dinner |
Day 2: 27 February 2025
9:00–10:00 | Keynote Speaker Alexandra Loske (Curator of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton) “Botanical Illustrator, Flower Painter and Colour Theorist: Mary Gartside’s Path from the Figurative to the Abstract in Her Early 19th-Century Illustrated Books” |
10:00-10:15 | break |
10:15–12:15 | Panel 4: Working Processes Katarzyna Pekacka-Falkowska (Poznan University of Medical Sciences) “The Colours of Nature in the Early Eighteenth Century Danzig/Gdańsk: Johann Philipp Breyne, Jacob Theodor Klein, and the Hand-Coloured Illustrations” Cam Sharp Jones (British Library) “Colouring Seba’s Thesaurus” Giulia Simonini (Technische Universität Berlin) “The Master Plates for August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof’s Insecten-Belustigung. A Family Enterprise” |
12:15–13:00 | Lunch (for speakers only) |
13:00–14:00 | Closing remarks and discussion |
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
techneredaktion (17. Februar 2025). Workshop: The Hand-Colouring of Natural History Illustrations in Europe, 1600–1850. Dimensionen der techne in den Künsten. Abgerufen am 13. Mai 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/13bts