Yoichiro Hirase
Kai-Senshu
1915–22
4 vols
Height: 25 cm (9 7/8 in)
Kyoto
The collection holds a number of works that deal with the introduction of Western science to Japan
This includes botanical illustrations with dates ranging from before the Meiji restoration in 1868 up to 1922, and three early nineteenth-centur y globes
I find the combination of Japanese and Western science and aesthetics par ticularly fascinating
Japan’s opening to the West did not occur in a single rush with the Meiji restoration of 1868 The Tokugawa militar y regime had already star ted to put out careful feelers and contact with the Dutch residing since the seventeenth centur y on Deshima Island, in Nagasaki Bay, was intensified Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866; see p 119) and his pupil Keisuke Ito (1803–1901) were two impor tant figures in nineteenth-centur y Japanese science Ito was the preeminent Japanese botanist at the time and a professor at Tokyo University Another botanist working in Tokyo at the time was Chikusai Kato (1813–?) who was responsible for the botanical wood panels in the collection (p 201)
One par ticularly interesting character was the zoologist and botanist Yoshio Tanaka (1838–1916; see pp 95, 101, 233, 242) Tanaka’s brother had been a doctor on Deshima and had been in contact with the Dutch, which had enabled Yoshio to gain access
to Western scientific material He studied medicine and pharmacy under Keisuke Ito and joined him at a sor t of national think tank set up in the early 1860s in response to US Commodore Perr y ’ s intervention in 1853, when he sailed into Tokyo Bay and began the process of Japan opening up to the West
The illustrations in these four volumes dealing with ‘ a thousand shells’ are spectacular Yoichirõ Hirase, born in 1859 and Japan’s first formal ‘malacologist’ or studier of molluscs, founded a museum in Kyoto in 1913 using his private for tune The museum was closed in 1919, before his death in 1925, and the majority of his valuable collection of shells was destroyed during the Second World War It is notewor thy that in this guide, Hirase employs full Linnaean classification, the system most commonly used in the West, alongside the equivalent Japanese system, despite the considerable trouble that earlier taxonomists had faced in reconciling these Western and Japanese classification terms
Although these illustrations were produced in the early twentieth centur y, their style is quite traditional The shell included in the first par t of the book becomes ver y different when heavily enlarged (see pp 10–11)
Box of botanical watercolour paintings
1867
Each: 46 37 5 5 cm (18 1/8 14 5/8 2 1/8 in)
Japan
This item comprises nine botanical watercolours
Five of them are mid-nineteenth centur y, by an unknown ar tist, and reputedly commissioned by Yoshio Tanaka (1838–1916) the zoologist and botanist In 1867, just before the Revolution leading to the Meiji restoration, Tanaka was par t of the group organising Japan’s par ticipation in the International Exposition in Paris When he returned from France, he found he was working for a new regime He had a long and successful career in education and the promotion of all sor ts of economic activity, such as useful botany (p 101) and commercial fishing (p 233)
The other four watercolours, including the two illustrated here, are likely to have been made by the Chinese ar tist, Saien Hosai, whose Chinese name was Xi yuan Fang ji (1736–?) Saien was a commercial ar tist who had emigrated from China to Japan in 1774, before finally settling in Nagasaki He is most famous in Japan for a painting of Mount Fuji The date of one of these watercolours is September 1774 written in Chinese characters and following the Chinese calendar
Teaching scroll with fish, insects and amphibians
1843
27 262 cm (10 5/8 103 1/8 in)
Japan
In this item the ar tist has chosen to show all these animals in the form of a two -and-a-half-metre long scroll, rather than in book form It is not immediately clear how this would have been used as only a few descriptions accompany the hand-painted illustrations, though this might suggest that a teacher would instruct the pupils verbally on each of the animals
The range of animals is quite arbitrar y It covers fish, insects and amphibians but omits mammals and birds
Although it is ver y difficult to see the detailed beauty of the animals in reproduction, for me this is a ver y fine piece of Japanese natural histor y ar t and the only Japanese scroll in the collection
John William Salter and Henr y Woodward
A descriptive catalogue of all the genera and species contained in the accompanying char t of fossil crustacea, showing the range in time of the several orders; with some recent types: illustrated by upwards of four hundred and ninety figures
1865
A single folded leaf of engravings
Height: 23 cm (9 1/8 in)
London
This is a foldout work where a large illustration unfolds into 16 times the size of the book, showing fossil crustacea and their distribution over time Each fossil is then individually illustrated and categorised
The stunning illustrations are by John William Salter himself, who was also responsible for the trilobite images (p 159)
Each, height: 31 cm London
These 17 volumes ranging from 1817 to 1844 are fairly random sets of transactions of the proceedings of the Linnean Society in London from the first half of the nineteenth centur y The Linnean Society was founded in 1788 when the collection of plants and fish specimens assembled by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) was bought and shipped to England The society is still active to this day
What attracted me to these volumes initially was the fact that they still had their original boards, which is the format that many publications were delivered to the purchaser in It was then up to the purchaser to have them bound as desired
It is ultimately, however, the illustrations which enchanted me They are by a large number of ar tists including my favourite George Schar f as well D Allen, CJ Canton, I Cur tis, E Farrer, L Guilding, JH Newton, JDC Sowerby, CH Smith, amongst others John Cur tis (1791–1862) made a large number of the illustrations, par ticularly in the earlier volumes, but individual contributors often used their own favourite ar tist The biologist Richard Owen made a habit of commissioning Schar f
Cur tis was an entomologist and illustrator whose most famous work was A Guide to the Arrangement of British Insects (1829) His original illustrations are now in the Natural Histor y Museum, London and his insect collections were ultimately sold to the Museum Victoria, Australia and the Natural Histor y Museum, Dublin
Amongst the competent line illustrations suppor ting the science being described, one suddenly also finds beautiful hand-coloured illustrations
My eye was par ticularly drawn to the illustrations by CJ Canton (?–1840) – an anatomical illustrator employed by Guy’s Hospital, London – produced in 1829 as par t of a paper on the mammar y organs of the kangaroo
Johann Gottlob von Kurr
The mineral kingdom; with coloured illustrations of the most impor tant minerals, rocks, and petrifactions
1859
24 leaves of plates
Height: 36 cm (14 1/8 in)
Edinburgh
Johann Gottlob von Kurr (1798–1870) was a prominent professor in Stuttgar t This work was a translation from the German version that he had published a year earlier
Both the German and the English editions are par ticularly finely illustrated The illustrations are hand-coloured copper plates, some heightened with gum arabic, while for others metallic ink has been used on the plates themselves Unfor tunately the name of the ar tist is not known
The dealer from whom I bought it wrote on the inside cover: ‘ some of the best nineteenth-centur y hand colouring to be found anywhere A rare work regularly broken for the beauty of its plates’ That just about tells you ever ything about what happens to these books
These impressions used nature -printing, where the wings of the butter flies were treated with a liquid preparation to release the colours onto paper The body, antennae and legs were then painted in This unusual technique resulted in remarkable colours and textures
The individuals involved in the production of this work are not recorded but the album was par t of a scientific expedition organised by Napoleon III (1808–73) during the French adventure in Mexico from 1861–67
Napoleon III took an interest in Mexico, hoping to benefit from the countr y ’ s resources and taking the oppor tunity of chronic anarchy, the Mexican suspension of the repayment of international debt and probably also from the United States’ distrac-
tion with its own civil wars, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 Napoleon put the Austrian Habsburg Ferdinand Maximilian (1832–67) on the throne in 1864, but then abandoned him in 1867 The ar tist Édouard Manet (1832–83) famously painted Maximilian’s execution by the Mexicans His wife Charlotte (Carlota) (1840–1927), daughter of Leopold I of Belgium, returned home to seek suppor t for her beleaguered husband, but went mad and remained so until she died in 1927
The scientific expedition to Mexico covered fields including natural histor y, medicine, public health, physics and chemistr y, histor y, linguistics, archaeology, economics, statistics and public works The findings of these investigations were published in stages up until 1899
Rev William Buckland
Reliquiæ diluvianæ: or,
Obser vations on the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel, and on other geological phenomena, attesting the action of an universal deluge
1823
27 leaves of engravings and lithographs by W Buckland, T Webster, W Clift, M
Morland, F Duncombe, H
O Neil and G Schar f
Height: 28 cm (11 1/8 in)
London
William Buckland (1784–1856) was an early palaeontologist who had studied at Corpus Christi College at Oxford University and was ordained into the Church of England in 1808 Buckland became Reader in Mineralogy at the university but introduced increasing amounts of geology and palaeontology into his ver y popular lectures He travelled extensively on the continent and became friendly with Georges Cuvier in Paris, whose opinions he quotes in this work
Reliquiae was his first major book dealing with animal remains from before the Great Flood, illustrated by Buckland himself and by a number of ver y competent ar tists Thomas Webster (1772–1844) was an ar tist, geologist and architect who studied at the Royal Academy of Ar ts, London, in the 1790s
He joined the newly founded Royal Institution in 1799 to super vise the design of the lecture theatre, chemistr y laborator y and various aspects of the building and later took up painting and illustrating Mar y Morland (1797–1857) was the daughter of a solicitor who was encouraged in her scientific pursuits by family friends in Oxford Morland was an accomplished illustrator who was known to send drawings to Cuvier and others She met and subsequently married Buckland in 1825 George Schar f was probably the best ar tist of the group (see p 141) The originals of the beautiful drawings he made for Buckland can still be seen in the storage of the Oxford University Museum
Less is known of the other illustrators: W Clift, F Duncombe and H O’Neil
John Lizars
A system of anatomical plates of the human body: accompanied with descriptions, and physiological, pathological and surgical obser vations c 1840
101 leaves of coloured engravings by WH Lizars
Height: 45 cm (17 3/4 in)
Edinburgh
This book dates from soon after 1832 when the Anatomy Act was passed, an act that legislated for legal access to unclaimed corpses for dissection
Prior to that only executed murderers were legally available to medical students
John Lizars (1787–1860) was the son of an engraver, and the brother of another After his education in Edinburgh and active ser vice in the Peninsular War, he became a successful surgeon and teacher of anatomy in Edinburgh In the late 1820s he is known to have lectured Charles Darwin, who was squeamish about dissecting bodies and gave up medicine
Lizars’s book of anatomical plates was an impor tant supplement to the dissection of cadavers The illustrations by his brother William Home Lizars (1788–1859) were intended to be as close as possible to the real thing
The illustrations in the volume are exceptionally fine The date that the book was purchased, 1840, is still visible The owner of the book, whose name has been rubbed out, made copious annotations in pencil and was likely to have been a ver y diligent student
