Beschreibung:

Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770) and Jacob van Huysum (1687-1740) Benjamin WILKES (d.1749 or earlier). The English Moths and Butterflies: together with the plants, flowers, and fruits whereon they feed, and are usually found...being copied from the subjects themselves, and painted on the best atlas paper. [Edited, arranged and prefaced by Henry Baker]. London: printed for and sold by Benjamin Wilkes [circa 1747-1749]. Small 2 (308 x 258mm.) Interleaved with larger (355 x 288mm.) blueey sugar paper, 2pp. subscribers' list. 120 etched plates by Wilkes of butterflies and moths amidst plants, the plants from drawings by Ehret and van Huysum. (The 54th plate with a section of the lower blank corner neatly cut away.) Late eighteenth century red straight-grained morocco gilt, covers with triple fillet border enclosing a wide 'greek-key' pattern border, surrounding a large central rectangular panel with broken corners with a sm of small flowerheads within lozenges, the spine in six compartments with double-raised bands, lettered in the second, the other compartments blank, each of the gaps between the double bands onlaid with a roll-tooled green morocco strip, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges, bookseller's label of R. Edwards, 142 New Bond Street, London (some scuffing to extremities). Provenance : Presentation copy with note, "This copy was a presentat.From ye Author J.Edwards"; WRH monogrammed armorial bookplate). AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION. A HITHERTO UNRECOGNIZED ADDITION TO THE CANON OF WORKS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER THE "FLOWER PAINTER EXTRAORDINARY": GEORGE DIONYSIUS EHRET. Paul Whalley, writing in 1972, quotes a letter from Henry Baker to William Arderon dated 17 August 1749. '..I am pleased to find the trifles I sent you proved all agreeable. The Natural History of Butterflies is in some sort my own child, having myself compiled it and put it in the order it is now, from Mr.Wilkes memorandums, he being indefatigable in his observations and faithful in the minuting down every particular but for the want of learning quite incapable of writing a book..' (see J. Soc. Biblphy. nat. Hist. [1972] 6 [2]: 127). Henry Baker, F.R.S. (1698-1774) first made his name (and later his fortune) as a result of the remarkable success of his method of teaching deaf mutes. He married Defoe's youngest daughter Sophia in 1729, was elected to the Society of Antiquaries in January 1740, and the Royal Society in March of the same year. In 1744 he was awarded the Copley Medal for his work with the microscope, and from 1754 was very active in the formation of the Society of Arts. After his death in November 1774 his extensive natural history and antiquarian collections were dispersed by auction. In the preface to the present work Henry Baker writes "As to the Plants, Flowers and Fruits, he [Wilkes] declares himself under the highest obligation to a most curious Naturalist, and worthy Member of the Royal Society of London, whose costly and valuable Collection is known to the learned world, and esteemed as it deserves. This Gentleman has generously permitted him to make use of many excellent Paintings of these subjects, which are taken from Nature by those two celebrated Artists Mr. George Dennis [ sic. ] Ehret, and Mr. Jacobus van Heysum [ sic. ], and executed with the utmost Judgement and Command of Pencil, so that he could hardly doubt but that the true Copies of them would give great Pleasure to the Lovers of Botany, whom he has endeavoured to entertain with all Variety he could introduce." Some initial research has confirmed that at least three of the plates correlate with recorded drawings by Ehret: Wilkes' 91st plate ('Burnet Rose') features a Field Rose ( Rosa spinosissima ) the original of which, a pencil and watercolour drawing (13.1x 10.7inches), was sold in these rooms recently (11 Nov. 1998 lot 44), and Wilkes' 64th and 79th plates include simplified versions of various parts of a drawing of a branch of a Smooth-leaved Elm