John Abbot in England and North America: his accomplishments as artist and naturalist

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XVII, Issue 2, 1 October 1984, Page 61

John Abbot in England and North America: his accomplishments as artist and naturalist

VIVIAN ROGERS-PRICE

Lured by the exotic and uncharted, the English naturalist John Abbot left his native London in 1773 to explore the natural history of British North America. In this quest he was not alone. Beginning with the 1662 chartering of the Royal Society of London, a community of naturalists had emerged with headquarters in London and contacts throughout the British Empire. These individuals increased their knowledge of natural history through observation of living organisms and preserved specimens, and through accurate illustration, and thus contributed significantly to the development of natural taxonomy, the formal exposition of scientific knowledge. Most stressed the importance of publication to advertise new discoveries and inspire others to explore the wonders of nature.

Abbot, however, neglected classification and never attempted to publish on his own. He sought instead to perfect his skills as collector and artist, achieving distinction in each. His colleague and correspondent William Swainson (who took to New Zealand the set of 103 Abbot watercolours now held by the Alexander Turnbull Library) described him as a ‘most assiduous collector and an admirable draftsman of insects’ whose specimens were ‘the finest ever transmitted as articles of commerce’. 1 Abbot stuffed birds and large spiders with cotton, spread the wings of butterflies and moths, and inflated caterpillars to make them appear lifelike. The fragility of these specimens doomed most, but thirty of his bird skins survive at Merseyside County Museums in Liverpool, England as testimony to his skill.

However, it was Abbot’s ability as an artist that would yield lasting fame. His colleagues in Europe and North America valued the meticulous accuracy of his watercolours illustrating plant and animal life and the accompanying descriptions detailing size, life cycle, habitat, and behaviour of the featured species. During a career in North America spanning almost seven decades, Abbot completed over five thousand watercolours. Of these, more than a thousand were bird portraits; an equally large number depicted life cycles of insects usually with typical food plants. His remaining work illustrated arthropods as individual figures alone or in

geometrically arranged groups. Only once does he seem to have drawn a human portrait, a likeness of himself completed around his fiftieth year. In it he appears self-confident but unassuming, evidently content with his role as an artist and naturalist (figure 1).

John Abbot was born in London on 11 June 1751, the second son ofjohn and Ann Abbot. As a child he developed a ‘love for books’, a ‘peculiar liking for insects’, and ‘a taste for drawing’. 2 Abbot’s father, a successful London attorney, encouraged his son’s interests. He arranged for the engraver and drawing master, Jacob Bonneau, to instruct young John at the family’s home. Bonneau’s lessons stressed drawing and perspective rather than watercolour. However, Abbot’s ten surviving watercolours completed in 1766 reveal his mastery of this medium. The following year he demonstrated his understanding of perspective in an etched vignette of a saddled and bridled work horse. 3

Imitating the examples of earlier naturalists, young Abbot perfected a compositional approach for illustrating insects and spiders. With specimens as models, Abbot drew each as close to life size as possible and often included up to a dozen or more figures arranged in a geometric pattern. He sketched each specimen in graphite before applying clear colours. His careful sketching and meticulous attention to detail enabled Abbot to capture the correct textures and coloration of each species. He often illustrated the metamorphic stages of moths and butterflies together with appropriate food plants.

Abbot’s personal library included Eleazar Albin’s Natural History of English Insects (1720), Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-43), and George Edwards’s Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743-51) and Gleanings of Natural History (1758-64). To purchase the latter, Abbot and his father visited Edwards, a renowned ornithologist, at his London home. Young Abbot presented Edwards with a selection of his drawings, and, in his words, Edwards ‘praised them much & desired me by all means to continue drawing, saying no doubt I wou’d be a publisher hereafter of some work on Natural history’. 4 Perhaps to encourage the aspiring naturalist artist, Edwards loaned Abbot a beetle from Jamaica. Abbot illustrated both dorsal and ventral sides of this specimen in a watercolour completed on 28 January 1769. 5

Bonneau, like Edwards, commended Abbot’s insect watercolours. Aware of his student’s entomological interests, Bonneau introduced him to another insect collector, James Rice. Through Rice, Abbot met the influential Dru Drury whose enthusiasm for natural history further inspired Abbot’s growing devotion to the field. A goldsmith andjeweller by trade, Drury avidly collected and studied insects, publishing his discoveries in Illustrations of Natural

History (1770-82). Drury showed Abbot his extensive insect collection and offered the young man some specimens to draw. With renewed excitement, Abbot continued raising butterflies and moths, increased his collecting expeditions into the English countryside, and began to purchase specimens from other countries such as Jamaica and Surinam. Later Abbot recalled that he ‘began to have a respectable Collection’ but ‘craved more’. 6 He continued to illustrate specimens in watercolour and took pains to identify each one in an accompanying note.

Meanwhile, even though Abbot’s father encouraged his son’s artistic and scientific interests, he selected a practical career for him in the law. An attorney in the Court of King’s Bench, Plea Side, the elder Abbot in February 1769 arranged for John to clerk in his law office. However, natural history not ‘Deeds, Conveyances & Wills’ gripped young Abbot’s attention. 7 When not occupied with legal duties, he collected and illustrated specimens. In 1770 Abbot’s budding reputation as an artist enabled him to exhibit two insect watercolours at the Society of Artists of Great Britain. His friendship with Henry Smeathman, ‘a brother Flycatcher’ who left London in 1771 to collect natural history specimens in Sierre Leone, Madagascar, and the West Indies, prompted Abbot to dream of a similar venture to North America. First he considered New Orleans, but Robert Beverley’s History and Present State of Virginia (1705; 2nd ed. 1722) stirred his imagination with its glowing descriptions of that colony’s natural environment. His thoughts ‘ingrossed by Natural history’, Abbot selected Virginia. 8

Other English naturalists familiar with Abbot’s talents sponsored his journey. The Royal Society of London and two private collectors, Thomas Martyn and Dru Drury, commissioned him to collect natural history specimens. Aboard Captain Thomas Woodford’s Royal Exchange, Abbot sailed from the English port city of Deal injuly 1773 and arrived at the mouth ofthejames River in Virginia on the sixteenth of September. 9 Abbot brought from London the standard collecting equipment of nets and preserving materials, as well as art supplies and several important books on natural history, including Directions for Bringing Over Seeds and Plants, from the East-Indies and Other Distant Countries, in a State of Vegetation (1771). Abbot found this treatise most useful. He annotated the entomology section with lists of insects, preceding each with a numeral to form a tabulation of his collecting activities. 10 In the weeks following his arrival, Abbot collected specimens representing 570 different insect species. He subsequently prepared a report on the geology of the region, collected additional insects, and raised a number of butterflies and moths from larvae. He continued his practice of recording pertinent

information about each species and illustrating specimens in watercolour (figure 2). In 1774-75 he sent three insect collections to London, but only one arrived safely. The other two were lost to storms in transit. 11

Discouraged by these losses and alarmed by the unrest in Virginia that preceded the American Revolution, Abbot fled to Georgia early in December 1775. He arrived the following February, five months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Abbot’s search for a secure haven in Georgia, however, was futile. By 1779 the war had reached the Georgia backcountry, and skirmishes between American and British forces became commonplace. Years later, in an unfinished autobiography, Abbot reminisced that the period following his arrival in Georgia ‘contains much more of Adventure, than the former part of my life, and continued through such bad & terrible time, that I often reflect, upon the goodness of providence in bringing me safely through them’. 12 Just what Abbot did during the years of conflict remains a mystery. Apparently, he remained true to his pacifist nature for he served neither in the Georgia militia nor in the Continental Line.

Abbot was married during the Revolutionary period, probably to Sarah (Warren?). Either the war made it difficult to register the marriage or the record was destroyed later in one of a series of courthouse fires. In 1778 or 9 the couple’s only child, John Abbot, Jr, was born. 13 Abbot continued his study of Georgia’s native fauna and flora. At first, he taught school to supplement the income derived from the sale of natural history specimens and watercolours. In later years, income from his sales to collectors and museums, coupled with a probable inheritance, enabled Abbot to support his family while devoting himself to natural history studies.

Abbot concentrated his explorations in the Savannah River Valley of southeastern Georgia. Here he observed, collected, and sketched the arthropods that had fascinated him since childhood and broadened his studies to include birds. In the 1820 she began to prepare herbaria. Wherever his journeys took him, Abbot noted ecological changes affecting the plants and animals. In 1791, for example, he observed that the numerous ponds found in pine woods became ‘shallow holes’ each summer with ‘a Multitude of small Cat Fish & other kinds & Tadpoles’ providing ‘a plentiful repast to the Aquatick Birds which then Visit us & breed here’. He further predicted that the birds would become much rarer with increased settlement. ‘lndeed’, he added, ‘I think they already decrease as they [farmers] already drain & plant many of these ponds annually’. 14 From Savannah, Georgia’s principal port, Abbot received mail,

obtained supplies, and shipped specimens and watercolours to collectors in Europe and the United States. His customers provided the cork-lined wooden boxes needed for shipping their orders. If watercolours were requested, Abbot packed these first under the cork in a false bottom for protection and to avoid customs duties. The remainder of the box he filled with specimens. Although the roads were ‘very bad in Georgia’, Abbot discovered that he could transport these boxes a hundred miles ‘without a single insect being hurt or misplaced’. Damage occurred only if the box was ‘opened by some Unskillful person in the Custom house’. 15 For several decades, Abbot had his London agent John Francillon arrange his contacts with European naturalists. Francillon, a

jeweller and dedicated naturalist, sold many of Abbot’s watercolours and specimens, while purchasing others for his own collection. By 1816 Francillon owned 297 of Abbot’s bird portraits and 2,843 of his watercolours of arthropods. Of the latter 331 illustrated the life cycle of butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, or beetles along with a representative food plant. The remaining watercolours portrayed specimens individually or grouped in geometric patterns. After Francillon’s death, Abbot made his own arrangements for sales of drawings and specimens and found a steady market for both. 16

At the heart of Abbot’s skill as an artist was his delicate application of clear colour. By 1782 he had begun to use a mixture of gum bouge and indigo for the colour green rather than the sap green that tended to darken with time. His compositions showing insect metamorphosis gradually became more decorative and elaborate. His early North American watercolours depicted adult insects as inert specimens with expanded wings radiating from a central food plant normally bearing either flower or fruit (figure 3). Abbot selected this arrangement because these insects ‘commonly hide their most beautiful colours when at rest’, and ‘neither are they admitted in that position in the Cabinets of the Curious’. 17 He portrayed the larval and pupal stages in typical positions —on leaves or stems or at the base of the plant. Most caterpillars appear in their final metamorphic instar. In some drawings they crawl on partially eaten leaves.

As presaged by his caterpillars, Abbot’s adult insects became more naturalistic in the early 1800 s. In contrast to his earlier reliance on specimen-like reproductions, his newer compositions illustrated the growing influence of the natural beauty he encountered in Georgia on his artistic consciousness. Abbot began, for example, to illustrate the underside of a butterfly by drawing the insect with folded, upright wings as it rested on the larval food plant, its body casting a delicate shadow across leaf or flower (figure 4).

In some watercolours, Abbot devoted more care to the representation of the insect than to its food plant. A meeting with the Savannah pharmacist and naturalist Augustus Gottlieb Oemler in 1805 resulted in significant improvements in the accuracy of Abbot’s plant delineations. Oemler was amazed that Abbot was unschooled in the scientific study of natural history and was unaware of Carl Linnaeus’s system of binomial nomenclature. After he had explained the Linnaean system to Abbot, Oemler noted that the naturalist corrected his practice of illustrating different ‘numbers of stamens on the same flower’. 18 Indeed, Abbot’s best efforts gave equal attention to both creature and

foliage, although his attention to botanical detail remained inconsistent throughout his career. The idea of illustrating the metamorphosis of an insect with its food plant did not originate with John Abbot. Maria Sibylla Merian developed this approach in the seventeenth century. Before Merian, the naturalist Johannes Goedaert had illustrated life cycles of insects but he did not include food plants. Innovative as they were, Merian’s compositions expressed an energised quality not found in nature. Others followed Merian’s lead, including the English artist Eleazar Albin. Although Albin’s insects and plants appeared more natural, he often relied on contrived geometric compositions, balancing insects in opposing positions at the corners or along the sides adjacent to the food plants. Abbot’s contribution was his

ability to convey natural beauty without abandoning his concern for scientific accuracy.

To prepare watercolours of insect metamorphosis, Abbot collected eggs and caterpillars of butterflies and moths or larvae of beetles and grasshoppers. He raised these larvae to adulthood, recording the date of each stage as it occurred, and by the spring of 1813 knew the life history of around 350 different lepidoptera species. l9 Studies of this type required extended periods of waiting. For on-going reference, Abbot prepared a master set of watercolours with descriptive notes which he constantly updated with new discoveries. 20 Abbot’s reliance on a book of model watercolours and notes on the life cycle of an insect occasionally resulted in duplicate compositions. For the most part, however, compositions appear only once in the existing Abbot corpus.

By 1793 James Edward Smith, founder and president of the Linnean Society of London, had acquired a collection of 106 Abbot watercolours of lepidoptera illustrating discoveries since his arrival in America. Abbot’s manuscript catalogue accompanied the drawings and described the first 104 in detail. Quite possibly Smith received them from Francillon, who acted as Abbot’s agent throughout this period. In the ‘lntroductory Notes’ of the manuscript catalogue, Abbot stated that he believed the collection was suitable for publication. If this was not feasible, he added, he would be content to have his name mentioned ‘now & then’ since ‘we are all naturally fond ... of recording and immortalizing our great Works’. He advised his prospective publisher to ‘Prune and trim what you please of the following rude Notes’ since they were not expressed ‘in any scientific manner’. 21

Smith’s preparations for publication took approximately three years. He hired the London printmaker John Harris to prepare many of the etchings while he organised the text. In the preface to the volumes, Smith was careful to give Abbot credit for his role in the creation of the publication. He explained that Abbot was responsible for the descriptions of the habits of the different lepidoptera and the illustrations showing their metamorphoses together with the plants upon which they depended. His own role, Smith wrote, was simply to arrange and edit Abbot’s manuscript so that it was suitable for publication. To distinguish Abbot’s comments from his own, Smith placed each of his essays in a separate paragraph in a different typeface. He added that he alone was responsible for the classification and assignment of scientific names, which the untutored Abbot had completely neglected. In 1797 Smith completed his work on Abbot’s manuscript and arranged for its publication in London as a two-volume work.

The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia

with its 104 hand-coloured etchings and commentary in both English and French was the first major publication devoted to North American entomology. Smith dedicated it to an otherwise anonymous young friend, Maria Anne Johnes, who had impressed him with her knowledge of natural history. She received a copy of both volumes of the publication from the publisher, James Edwards. In her copies Abbot’s original watercolours illustrated the text. The two unpublished drawings were also tipped into her copy of the second volume.

Unfortunately, the venture lost money for Edwards, Smith, and the other individuals involved in its financing. Thus in 1803 Edwards decided not to publish a third volume and declined Francillon’s offer to use his personal collection of Abbot’s watercolours and notes for the project at no charge. 22 That later editions of the plates used in The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia did appear is indicated by watermarks. Title pages and text, however, date from the 1797 publication suggesting that surplus copies were printed initially. Work began on reprinting the plates no earlier than 1817 and perhaps as late as 1827 or later. The engraved labels below the etchings of Abbot’s watercolours vary from printing to printing, as do the figures illustrating the Dark-Clouded Tussock Moth (Dasychira meridionalis memorata) and the Brown and White Tussock Moth (Dasychira leucophaea) on plates 77 and 78. Following Abbot’s instructions which accompanied his watercolours of these species, Smith switched the adult insects for these two plates. Thus the original published etchings illustrate the moths of each with the correct larvae, while later versions mistakenly depict larva of one species with adults of the other. Finally, the artist R. Martin who worked in London between 1826 and 1838 acquired the etched copper plates, engraved his logo (R. Martin. Book & Printseller, 47. Great Queen strt: Lincolns Inn Fields) along the lower edge, and republished the hand-coloured etchings apparently without the text.

While friends published his work on the lepidopterous insects, Abbot turned his attention to Georgia birds. In 1791 he completed one hundred watercolour bird portraits which he sold through Francillon to Chetham’s Library in Manchester, England. These are Abbot’s earliest documented ornithological drawings. In 1805 and 1809 Abbot augmented this set with fifty-five watercolours of birds and eggs, likewise sold through Francillon. In addition, Francillon purchased 297 ornithological watercolours for his private collection. Thereafter, Abbot continued to collect and depict birds. 23 As was his custom with arthropods, Abbot used actual specimens as models for his ornithological watercolours. His meticulous

application of clear colour enabled him to depict individual feathers while creating a realistic sense of plumage. His compositions generally followed the eighteenth-century convention of illustrating a monumental bird on a miniaturised tree stump or branch. At times he added an insect to the composition. In his early watercolours he treated both birds and landscape details much as George Edwards had done in his publications. Meeting Edwards while a young man must have deeply impressed Abbot, because he often used typical Edwards motifs, such as stylised flowers and grasses or barren trees with roots forming patterns in raised sections of soil. He also borrowed many bird poses and, at times, entire compositions rendered in reverse. In other watercolours, however,

Abbot created striking compositions of statuesque birds in naturalistic poses presiding over miniaturised landscapes often with recognisable plant species. For example, in his 1791 White Heron (figure 5) Abbot omitted the stylised vegetation typical of Edwards and included a bald cypress ( Taxodium distichum) with millet (Pennisetum glaucum) . As his work progressed, he continued to rely on firsthand observations of each species and less on Edwards’s illustrations. Thus Abbot’s slightly later watercolour, Red-throated Hunting Bird [sic] (figure 6) depicts the only bird he ever portrayed on the wing. The female hummingbird hovers to sip nectar from the flowering cross-vine {Anisostichus capreolata) .

As an artist illustrating Georgia birds, Abbot had his subject matter clearly defined. Through the years he continued to illustrate many of the same species as well as new discoveries. Not surprisingly, he tended to repeat poses with certain species, while experimenting with new stances for others. For example, later watercolours of the hummingbird followed the basic composition of the earlier watercolour while in contrast to the 1791 White Heron , an 1823 drawing showed it swallowing a fish. However, unlike his illustrations of insects, Abbot did not maintain a master set of bird watercolours. Closely related or duplicate drawings dating from approximately the same time suggest that Abbot preferred to complete two or more reproductions based on the same specimen before altering the composition. His series of watercolours portraying the northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) demonstrates this because the distinctive white wing bands of this species vary among individual birds. Aware ofthis, Abbot carefully recorded the banding as it appeared on the,specimen before him. Thus he completed the watercolours for Chetham’s Library and for Francillon from the same specimen. In mockingbirds of a later date, he relied on different specimens.

In 1793 Abbot began a study of Georgia spiders and during the next five years completed 107 watercolours with a manuscript catalogue describing each figure. These notes contained an introductory essay in which Abbot suggested classifying spiders by the shape of their webs. In this system he divided the spiders into three categories: those with round or regular webs; those with irregular ones; and those with no webs. Such a classification scheme might have become classic, but Abbot never developed it further. Instead, he explained that he included these ‘Divisions as a hint to the more skillful’ and added that specimens classified in this manner would ‘afford another rich Display of the Wonderful and Boundless Variety of Nature’. 24 Not even in the accompanying watercolours did Abbot attempt to arrange the spiders in accordance with his classification scheme. He followed the approach used by Eleazar

Albin in his Natural History of Spiders and Other Curious Insects (1736) and depicted a central spider surrounded by four others. Above individual figures he noted the number and arrangement of eyes. In 1821 Charles Athanase Walckenaer acquired this collection and used it to identify and describe the Georgia spiders included in his Histoire Naturelle des Insectes: Apt eres (1837-47).

In 1800 Abbot completed an additional 137 spider watercolours which became part of Lrancillon’s personal collection. Here as he had in the earlier series, Abbot proposed his classification scheme and described the nest building habits of a wasp he termed ‘mud dauber’ and its use of paralysed spiders as food for its larvae. Abbot commented that upon opening a mud dauber’s nest filled with spiders, he witnessed ‘a most curious and pleasing sight, to see such a large quantity of Spiders at one view of the rarest kinds and of the most beautyfull colors’. He concluded with the observation that were it ‘possible still to continue to preserve them in their beauty and freshness they would make a wonderfull addition to Natural History’. 25 Such observations naturally interested Adam White at the British Museum (Natural History), whose 1841 publication ‘Descriptions of new or little known Arachnida’ quoted Abbot on the subject. 26 Presumably at White’s suggestion, Charles Darwin decided to include Abbot’s observations on ‘mud daubers’ and spiders in his revised second edition of the fournal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage ofH.M.S. Beagle Round the World (1845).

In Georgia Abbot’s studies brought him in contact with other naturalists. He met Aloysius Enslen, botanical collector for Prince Maurice-Joseph of Liechtenstein, and he knew Robert Squibb, who assisted Thomas Walter with his Flora Caroliniana (1788). While collecting plants in Georgia in June 1803, the horticulturist John Lyon stopped to visit Abbot. Augustus Oemler not only provided instruction in botany, but also loaned Abbot arthropod specimens from his own extensive natural history collection. Abbot, in turn, prepared a collection of watercolours illustrating the life cycles of insects with food plants for his friend. As librarian of the Savannah Library Society, Oemler arranged the purchase of an additional series of Abbot insect and plant watercolours. Another of Abbot’s friends, the botanist William Baldwin, examined the group of drawings for the Library in December 1811 and found them ‘exquisitely beautiful and scientifically accurate’. 27 Stephen Elliott, the author of A Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia (1821-24), also received a group of insect and food plant watercolours from Abbot. Elliott provided Abbot with a number of insect specimens collected in Georgia and South Carolina, and Abbot reciprocated with plant specimens.

In 1809 the ornithologist Alexander Wilson met Abbot while visiting in Savannah. On several collecting trips, Abbot shared his knowledge of Georgia birds with Wilson, supplying detailed information on such things as nesting habits and migratory patterns. Abbot also showed undescribed species to Wilson, who in turn introduced them to the scientific world in his multi-volume publication, American Ornithology (1808-14). After Wilson returned to Philadelphia, Abbot continued to supply specimens and comments on different birds. Following Wilson’s death in 1813, Abbot sent data to George Ord, the Philadelphia naturalist who completed the last two volumes of American Ornithology. Abbot’s information on the black-billed cuckoo ( Coccyzus erythropthalmus) and anhinga ( Anhinga anhinga ) included in American Ornithology prompted John James Audubon to quote Abbot’s comments in his own publication.

European scientists also depended upon Abbot’s specimens, watercolours, and written comments for their knowledge of Georgia species. For example, Johann Christian Fabricius of Denmark, Jacob Hiibner of Augsburg, and Thomas Martyn of London published descriptions based on Abbot’s insect specimens. Carl Illiger, the director of the Zoological Museum of Berlin University from .810 to 1813, used Abbot’s bird specimens to describe previously unclassified species as did the English ornithologist John Latham. Between 1814 and 1836 Abbot prepared watercolours and collected insects and birds for Heinrich Escher-Zollikofer, a Swiss merchant interested in natural history, and through his recommendation, the French ornithologist Frederic de Lafresnaye began to purchase bird specimens from Abbot in 1827.

Hoping to obtain ‘a limited number of insect specimens’ from John Abbot, William Swainson contacted Abbot’s London agent John Francillon in July 1813. 28 Francillon offered him two boxes with approximately 1,800 of Abbot’s specimens received that spring, but Swainson declined the purchase. Instead, three years later, he asked that Francillon request Abbot to prepare a collection composed of the male and female of each species with more rare insects than common ones. He proposed that a group of his ‘Entomological friends in London’ would inspect it to sec whether a sufficient number of rare species was included. Francillon declined, explaining that he could not risk the specimens being returned to Abbot should Swainson or his friends ‘disapprove ol them’. He added, ‘When I have (for many Years past) received Boxes from Mr. Abbot I always took them and have never been disappointed with His good Conduct, and whenever any were broke or damaged in the Journey from Liverpool to London the loss was mine but it

did not often happen’. 29 As Francillon suggested, Swainson wrote directly to Abbot and ordered not only a collection of insects but also a series of watercolours which he planned to publish as a continuation of The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia. In 1818 Abbot sent him 104 drawings illustrating the life cycles of insects and food plants not included in the earlier publication. 30 Later Swainson abandoned his plans, and, instead, in his first volume of Zoological Illustrations, he included a simplified version of Abbot’s Great Sesia (figure 7). Swainson named this insect Thyreus abbottii (currently known as Sphecodina abbottii)

to commemorate the exertions of Mr. Abbott (sic) well known as having furnished the materials for that beautiful work the Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia edited by Sir James Edward Smith. And from the unpublished drawings of this zealous collector, the larva and pupa have been figured. Mr. Abbott (sic) writes that it is a rare species in Georgia, and feeds on the grape. The female differs not in colour from the male, which is here represented. 31

Only one other publication included hand-coloured etchings of Abbot’s watercolours. Co-authored by the Frenchman Jean Alphonse Boisduval and the American John Eatton LeConte, Histoire generate et iconographie des lepidopteres et des chenilles de VAmerique septentrionale was published in Paris between 1829 and 1837. Preparations for this volume began much earlier. In 1813 LeConte commissioned Abbot to draw the lepidoptera of Georgia. He specified that Abbot omit the food plant and illustrate only the caterpillar, pupae, and adult. If the male and female of a species differed at maturity, Abbot was to depict both. 32 LeConte travelled to Paris in 1828, taking with him an extensive collection of North American insects and apparently a large number of Abbot’s watercolours illustrating the metamorphic changes of insects. While there, he and Boisduval discussed plans for a book on North American lepidoptera to be written jointly. 33 In addition to the specially commissioned lepidoptera watercolours, Boisduval acquired an additional 201 Abbot illustrations of insect life cycles and food plants. 34 In all likelihood, these also came from LeConte. Drawing from both groups of Abbot watercolours along with others by LeConte, Paul Chretien Romain Constant Dumenil, and Emile Blanchard, work began on seventy-eight hand-coloured etchings for the publication. Dumenil prepared the first thirty plates, and Borromee the remaining forty-eight. The volume appeared in twenty-six fascicles; a second volume on moths of North America was planned but never published.

Throughout his career as a naturalist artist, Abbot depended on others to publish his work. Thus, more than one thousand of his bird watercolours remained unpublished. From about the same number of drawings of the metamorphic stages of insects, less

than two hundred were reproduced as published illustrations. Abbot never supervised the printing of these watercolours, but instead relied on others to publish them as they pleased. The hazards of this approach are evident when his original watercolours are compared to the hand-coloured etchings prepared by Dumenil and Borromee or even the hand-coloured lithograph in Swainson’s publication. Abbot’s carefully wrought compositions lose their distinctiveness in the reproductions. Another example can be found in the intaglio print of excerpts from Abbot’s watercolours of insects and plants. Prepared by William Raddon, this print appeared in the 1840 London periodical, the Entomologist. 35 Raddon lifted and rearranged Abbot’s figures to form

a geometric composition totally unlike the originals. Indeed, only those etchings illustrating The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous bisects of Georgia reflect Abbot’s actual compositions, but even here exceptions exist as in the illustration of the Brown and Yellow Skipper Butterfly (Wallengrenia otho ) with its fantasy landscape embellishing Abbot’s watercolour. Abbot spent his last years living in Bulloch County, Georgia, on land owned by William E. McElveen. Abbot’s wife had died in 1817 and his son in 1826. In 1839 Abbot bequeathed all his possessions to McElveen. 36 Abbot died sometime after the 1840 census of Bulloch County was filed on October 27; the exact date of his death is not recorded. McElveen buried his friend in his family’s cemetery. Not long afterward, Oemler went to see McElveen hoping to purchase Abbot’s papers, watercolours, or colours, but nothing remained —the McElveen children ‘had used up all’. 37

Much of Abbot’s work, however, did survive. His exquisite images of Georgia’s bird, insect, and plant life established Abbot as one of the premier naturalist artists of the nineteenth century. In his watercolours Abbot combined a talent for composition and design with the technical skill for capturing the textures of his subjects. While his bird portraits with their dominant figures imposed upon a miniaturised background never achieved the animation and vigour characteristic of John James Audubon, in his watercolours of insects and plants Abbot created fresh and elegant compositions unparalleled in natural history.

The first fascicle of John Abbot’s Insects of Georgia, comprising 6 plates with an introduction (see note 1 above), is available from the Alexander Turnbull Library, price SSO the set, $lO individual plates (25% discount to Friends), postage $4. The second fascicle, of 10 plates, is to be published in 1985.— Edit.

REFERENCES I gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and assistance provided by Robert Enggass, Cecil L. Smith, and Nancy C. Coile at the University of Georgia; Joseph Ewan at Tulane University; Douglas C. Ferguson at the Systematic Entomology Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture; A. P. Harvey at the British Museum (Natural History); George A. Rogers at Georgia Southern College; and my husband Michael E. Price, in preparing this article. Fellowships from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the English Speaking Union, and the University of Georgia have enabled me to pursue my research on John Abbot. 1 William Swainson, Taxidermy, with the Biography of the Zoologists, and Notices of Their Works (London, 1840), p. 99; see Phil Parkinson, ‘Natural History Drawings and Watercolours by John Abbot, “the Aurelian”, Naturalist of Georgia, in the Alexander Turnbull Library’, Turnbull Library Record, 11 (May 1978), 26-36, and his introduction to John Abbot’s Insects of Georgia, fasc. 1 (Wellington, 1983), Bp.; A.T.L. Picture Coll., E 272.

2 All dates are cited according to the Gregorian Calendar. The primary source for information about Abbot through 1776 is his manuscript autobiography, ‘Notes on my Life’, Museum of Comparative Zoology Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Although Abbot gave his birthday as 12 June 1751, it is recorded as 11 June 1751 in St George, Hanover Square, London, Register Book of Baptisms Beginning March 25, 1738, vol. 2. 3 All ten watercolours signed by Abbot and dated 1766 are included in the manuscript ‘A Natural History of Insects’, Houghton Library, Harvard. His etching is in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum. 4 ‘Notes on my Life’. 5 ‘Natural History of Insects’. 6 ‘Notes on my Life’; and Abbot’s 97 watercolours in the Library of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA. 7 ‘Notes on my Life’. For record of the clerkship see Public Record Office, Register of Affidavits of Due Execution, 1749-84, Series I, No. 1880, IND 4568. The actual affidavit has not survived. 8 ‘Notes on my Life’ mentions a history of Virginia that described the area in ‘glowing Colours’. Of the available histories, only the first and second editions of Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia, in Four Parts (London, 1705, 1722) fit Abbot’s description.

9 ‘Notes on my Life’; Virginia Gazette, 16 September 1773, p.2. 10 I am indebted to Professor Joseph Ewan for telling me of this annotated publication in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA. 11 British Museum (Natural History), Letterbook of Dru Drury, Drury to Abbot, 10 April 1774, 28 November 1774; ‘Notes on my Life’. 12 ‘Notes on my Life’. 13 Linnean Society of London, William Swainson Correspondence, I, Abbot to Swainson, 1 May 1818, mentions the death of his wife in autumn 1817. The corresponding death of Sarah Abbot on 11 November 1817, suggests that Abbot’s wife was named Sarah (Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, GA, Chatham County Department of Public Health, Vital Statistics Registrar, Death Register 1811-18, Drawer 188, Roll 34). Her maiden name may have been Warren since a Mr Warren is mentioned as the uncle of John Abbot, Jr ( Republican and Savannah Evening Ledger, 10 March 1808, p. 3). John Abbot, Jr, died in 1826 at the age of 47; therefore he was born in 1778 or 9 (Chatham County Health Department, Savannah, GA, Chatham County Death Records, 18 August 1826).

14 University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, GA, Abbot, ‘A Catalogue of Georgia Birds with Notes’. 15 Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, Abbot to Heinrich Escher-Zollikofer, 18 April 1813, 14 April 1817, 20 September 1818. 16 British Library, Egerton MSS 1137-1138 (Francillon’s personal collection of Abbot’s bird watercolours); BM(NH), ‘Drawings of the Insects of Georgia, in America’ (his Abbot arthropod watercolours). 17 Linnean Society, James Edward Smith Correspondence, Abbot, ‘A Natural History of the North American Insects’. 18 Harvard, MCZ Archives, Oemler to Thaddeus William Harris, 27 April 1834, typescript copy. 19 Cornell, Abbot to Escher-Zollikofer, 18 April 1813. 20 Harvard, Arnold Arboretum Library, Abbot to Stephen Elliott, 3 August 1817.

21 Abbot’s original watercolours are now part of the John Work Garrett Collection, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. His manuscript catalogue is part of the James Edward Smith Collection, Linnean Society of London. 22 BL, ADD. MSS 29533, Francillon to John Leigh Phillips, 13 January 1806. 23 Ibid., Francillon-Phillips correspondence, 3 October 1792-26 December 1809. These Abbot watercolours purchased by Chetham’s Library have been dispersed following a 1980 auction by Christie, Manson, & Woods International Inc., New York. Francillon’s collection is BL, Egerton MSS 1137-1138.

24 Bibliotheque Centrale du Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, MSS 274, 841. 25 BM(NH), Abbot, ‘Drawings of the Insects of Georgia, in America’, vol. 14. 26 Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 7 (1841), 471-77 (pp. 472-73). 27 Reliquiae Baldwinianae, compiled by William Darlington, facsimile of 1843 cd. (New York and London, 1969), p. 56. Oemler’s collection is at Houghton Library, Harvard. 28 Linnean Society, Swainson to Francillon, 20 July 1813. 29 Linnean Society, Francillon to Swainson, 6 October 1813, 15 April 1816. 30 Linnean Society, Abbot to Swainson, 20 December 1816-15 January 1820; see also note 1 above.

31 William Swainson, Zoological Illustrations, 2 vols., ser. 1 (London, 1820-21), I, text to pi. 60. 32 Cornell, Abbot to Escher-Zollikofer, 3 September 1813. 33 M. Auguste Salle, ‘Notice necrologiquc sur John L. LeConte’, Annales de la Societe entomologique de France, 3, ser. 6 (1883), 571-76 (p. 571). 34 A collection of the commissioned Abbot watercolours, many of which were used to prepare the published etchings, is located in the University of South Carolina Library, Columbia, SC. The manuscript notes for the 201 illustrations of insects with plants are at Houghton Library, Harvard. 35 The Entomologist , 1 (1840-42), unnumbered plate. 36 Abbot’s 4June 1839 deed was recorded on 24 October 1839 (Bulloch County Courthouse, Statesboro, GA, Bulloch County Deed Book 5, p. 292). In 1957 the Georgia Historical Society dedicated a memorial plaque honouring Abbot at the McElveen family cemetery ( Savannah Morning News, 25 May 1957, pp. 18, 12). 37 Harvard, MCZ Archives, Oemler to Harris, 14 March 1851.