The Queens Gallery, Buckingham Palace
6 September 08
A really interesting show curated by the Royal Collection in collaboration with our most famous living naturalist, Sir David Attenborough. It focuses on the works of four artists and a collector, whose passion for enquiry and nature left a beautiful and bizarre legacy of images and writings from a time when new species were being discovered at a rate never superseded.
Elegantly staged in the luxurious surroundings of the Queens Gallery, this show brings together wonderful studies from Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Wenceaslaus Hollar, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby. Fine original sketches and watercolour studies are shown alongside priceless original leather bound one-off editions. The brightness and quality of colour is still astounding, considering most of these works were created between 1600 and 1800.
An essential show and a good excuse to rummage through the Queens vast collection of historical art!!
