248
Central Park, in New York, hosts a similar resplendence of respite for some 30
million sojourners annually. But other recent biological soul retreats in Holland
have witnessed tremendous blow-back. In the case of the marshlands east of
Amsterdam, an attempt at re-wilding resulted in a grim vertebrate system collapse,
as thousands of large herbivores starved to death, accompanied by the loss of countless trees and unknown numbers of flowering plant species.
24
As in the case of the
Colorado state flower, the global human population explosion, with its accompanying habitat manipulation, has changed everything for conservation, since the time of
the Flower Breughel. With so altered and adjudicated an environmental context, the
backstory for artists has also changed.
The consistently astonishing Claude Monet, embarking on his famed “Water
Lilies” period, is said to have declared that “It is maybe to flowers that I owe becoming a painter.”
25
One might rightly assume that irises and sunflowers had an equally
transformative impact upon van Gogh. At the height of European Romanticism,
flowers had recalled a “superintending providence of the Almighty,” of “Heaven’s
immortal spring,” wrote Rebecca Hey in her famed work The Moral of Flowers
(London 1833).
26
Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), a
true disciple of Carol Linnaeus, had infused his own scientific passions with a
sonance unique to his uncanny love of plants. In 1791 he published The Botanic
Garden containing two lengthy and ecstatic poems, “The Economy of Vegetation”
and “The Loves of the Plants,” in which he endeavored, in his words, to “enlist
Imagination under the banner of Science…to induce the ingenious to cultivate the
knowledge of Botany….”
27
Darwin had been influenced by Richard Bradley, who in
1721 wrote an extensive “Account of the State of Gardening” throughout Great
Britain.
28
Bradley, in turn, must have been familiar with the proliferation of earlier
botanical codices and herbaria, such as those published by Otto Brunfels in 1532,
Leonhart Fuchs in 1542, Hieronymus Bock in 1546, and Prince Eugen of Savoy in
his ten-volume Florilegium in the 1670s, to name but a few of the remarkable florae
of the Renaissance.
29
Today, artists and scientists have easily inherited all of these influences, an abundance of ethnobotanical literature from every region,
30
biological epiphanies, and
24 See “Dutch rewilding experiment sparks backlash as thousands of animals starve,” by Patrick
Barkham, The Guardian, April 27, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/
dutch-rewilding-experiment-backfires-as-thousands-of-animals-starve, Accessed May 13, 2019.
25 See https://fondation-monet.com/en/claude-monet/quotations/; see also Monet Or The Triumph
Of Impression, Daniel Wildenstein, Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, Köln Germany 1996.
26 pp.vii–viii.
27 First Edition, J. Johnson, London, 1791, p.v.
28 See A Philosophical Account Of The Works Of Nature, by Richard Bradley, London, 1721.
29 For one of the most lavish and comprehensive works on the topic, see A Garden Eden.
Masterpieces of Botanical Illustration, by H. Walter Lack, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Taschen, Cologne, Germany 2008. See also “Floral Art History,” by David Wagner, https://www.
davidjwagnerllc.com/janeJonesInsert_Apr2020.pdf
30 See, for example, “Amazon tribe creates 500-page traditional medicine encyclopedia,” by Jeremy
26 Botanical Equations for Paradox
Central Park, in New York, hosts a similar resplendence of respite for some 30
million sojourners annually. But other recent biological soul retreats in Holland
have witnessed tremendous blow-back. In the case of the marshlands east of
Amsterdam, an attempt at re-wilding resulted in a grim vertebrate system collapse,
as thousands of large herbivores starved to death, accompanied by the loss of countless trees and unknown numbers of flowering plant species.
24
As in the case of the
Colorado state flower, the global human population explosion, with its accompanying habitat manipulation, has changed everything for conservation, since the time of
the Flower Breughel. With so altered and adjudicated an environmental context, the
backstory for artists has also changed.
The consistently astonishing Claude Monet, embarking on his famed “Water
Lilies” period, is said to have declared that “It is maybe to flowers that I owe becoming a painter.”
25
One might rightly assume that irises and sunflowers had an equally
transformative impact upon van Gogh. At the height of European Romanticism,
flowers had recalled a “superintending providence of the Almighty,” of “Heaven’s
immortal spring,” wrote Rebecca Hey in her famed work The Moral of Flowers
(London 1833).
26
Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), a
true disciple of Carol Linnaeus, had infused his own scientific passions with a
sonance unique to his uncanny love of plants. In 1791 he published The Botanic
Garden containing two lengthy and ecstatic poems, “The Economy of Vegetation”
and “The Loves of the Plants,” in which he endeavored, in his words, to “enlist
Imagination under the banner of Science…to induce the ingenious to cultivate the
knowledge of Botany….”
27
Darwin had been influenced by Richard Bradley, who in
1721 wrote an extensive “Account of the State of Gardening” throughout Great
Britain.
28
Bradley, in turn, must have been familiar with the proliferation of earlier
botanical codices and herbaria, such as those published by Otto Brunfels in 1532,
Leonhart Fuchs in 1542, Hieronymus Bock in 1546, and Prince Eugen of Savoy in
his ten-volume Florilegium in the 1670s, to name but a few of the remarkable florae
of the Renaissance.
29
Today, artists and scientists have easily inherited all of these influences, an abundance of ethnobotanical literature from every region,
30
biological epiphanies, and
24 See “Dutch rewilding experiment sparks backlash as thousands of animals starve,” by Patrick
Barkham, The Guardian, April 27, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/
dutch-rewilding-experiment-backfires-as-thousands-of-animals-starve, Accessed May 13, 2019.
25 See https://fondation-monet.com/en/claude-monet/quotations/; see also Monet Or The Triumph
Of Impression, Daniel Wildenstein, Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, Köln Germany 1996.
26 pp.vii–viii.
27 First Edition, J. Johnson, London, 1791, p.v.
28 See A Philosophical Account Of The Works Of Nature, by Richard Bradley, London, 1721.
29 For one of the most lavish and comprehensive works on the topic, see A Garden Eden.
Masterpieces of Botanical Illustration, by H. Walter Lack, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Taschen, Cologne, Germany 2008. See also “Floral Art History,” by David Wagner, https://www.
davidjwagnerllc.com/janeJonesInsert_Apr2020.pdf
30 See, for example, “Amazon tribe creates 500-page traditional medicine encyclopedia,” by Jeremy
26 Botanical Equations for Paradox