Ficus

This elegant folio, botanical engraving is from Christoph Jakob Trew’s work Plantae Selectae. The work was published in Nuremberg between 1750 and 1773. Georg Dionysius Ehret was the artist for the work and was considered one of the most influential artists in the world of botanical illustration. Ehret’s plates are both remarkable and scientifically accurate. The original hand-coloring was completed by J. J. Haid.

Plantae Selectae is one of the greatest of all eighteenth-century botanical books, drawn by the greatest of eighteenth-century botanical artists, George Dionysius Ehret. Linnaeus, wrote to Trew, in Latin, that “The miracles of our century in the natural sciences are your work of Ehret’s plants…nothing to equal them was seen in the past or will be in the future.”

Christoph Jakob Trew, a physician and botanist, had for a number of years been an admirer of Ehret’s work. Ehret, a brilliant botanical artist, was unrivalled in his ability to “achieve realism, majesty, ineffable colour, all in one breathtaking look.” (Hunt) Born in Heidelberg in 1710, he originally worked as a gardener and practised drawing in his spare time. His artistic abilities led him to the service of a Regensburg banker named Leskenkohl, and it was during this period that Trew met Ehret.

Trew was to remain a friend and patron of Ehret’s throughout his life, and by 1742, the germ of what was to become the present publication was already under discussion when Trew wrote to Christian Thran in Carlsruhe “Every year I receive some beautifully painted exotic plants [by Ehret] and have already more than one hundred of them….”

Ehret moved to London in the late 1730s, where he painted the recently introduced exotics at the Chelsea Physic Garden and established himself as a teacher of flower-painting and botany. Discussions about the projected work continued by letter until 1748, when Johann Jacob Haid from Augsburg agreed to produce the engravings from Ehret’s drawings.