CHARLES B. WOOD III

American Scientific Illustration, 1675–1775

THE study of scientific illustration from an art historical or simply from a historical point of view is one of those topics which seems to have been singularly neglected.1 To the extent that art historians or bibliographers have studied American illustration, they have been concerned primarily with the work either of early wood cutters and wood engravers illustrating literature and poetry2 or the work of major artists such as Winslow Homer.3 Each of these areas leaves the illustrator more or less free to exercise his imagination and this is essentially the difference between illustrator’s illustration and scientific illustration; where the former can do more or less what he pleases, the scientific illustrator must make a precise visual statement of exact fact. And that visual statement must be exactly repeatable. To be repeatable the illustration must be printed from an engraved or relief plate; it must, in fact, be a “print.” Before turning to the prints, however, let us look briefly at the nature of science in colonial America, in the one-hundred-year span covered by the years of this conference, 1675–1775.4

Science in America prior to the Revolution consisted primarily of descriptive natural history with a smattering of astronomy in the New England states. There was considerable activity in the field of medicine, but as the first illustrated American medical book did not appear until 1786,5 we can exclude this field from our discussion entirely. In late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England astronomy was popular, at first among a small circle of educated clergymen and later among the general populace, and it is in this field that we find the first scientific illustrations made and published in America. The vehicle for this publication was the monthly almanac, and much of this astronomical material was tied in with the great interest in astrology and astrological botany. As the nature of these illustrations was crude in the extreme, and as they were linear and schematic representations of the movements of celestial bodies, and in every case diametrically opposed to the natural history illustrations which were, or attempted to be, exact illustrations (i.e., “illusions”) of how real things actually looked, it is perhaps more correct to call them diagrams rather than illustrations. In any case, let us look at a few of them. The earliest such diagram that I have been able to find (Fig. 102) was published in Boston in 1675 and was first called to my attention by Richard B. Holman in his lecture at Winterthur in 1970.6 He identifies it as the work of John Foster. This marvelous image depicts the stellar universe as described by Galileo and Copernicus. How curious our ancestors were; on the one hand they would accept the most advanced and sophisticated ideas of the new science of the humanistic philosophers of the Renaissance while at the same time maintaining a conventional and literal belief in the fundamental tenets of the Christian religion. As is well known, this dichotomy lasted well into the nineteenth century and in some respects still exists today. But let us look at the illustration as divorced from these considerations. The technique, a relief print cut from a wood block, was to remain the only medium for scientific illustration published in America for about fifty years.7 The iconography of the Foster cut is extremely interesting. The fields of stars in the four spandrels, to symbolize, presumably, the outer reaches of the solar system, and the smiling sun with sunburst in the center, are taken directly from mediaeval prototypes; the star fields especially remind one of the painted vaults of gothic cathedrals. These mediaeval visual conventions stand in stark contrast to the actual meaning of the illustration which is, of course, one of the great discoveries of the Renaissance, the fact that the earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. I think perhaps the point to be made here is that while the content is highly and truly scientific, the actual design and execution were left up to the artisan, who combined mediaeval folk traditions with modern scientific principles. In short, there was no tradition or precedent to be followed so he did as he pleased. Though I have not found sources or models for this and the following astronomical illustrations, I am certain that they were copied from earlier English almanacs. They were not original diagrams of American “invention.”

102. The Copernican System, published in 1675

We tend today to think of astrology as a pseudoscience, but in the period under discussion it was very seriously taken. Figure 103 is a woodcut of the so-called “man-of-signs” from another of the almanacs published by John Foster in Boston, this one in 1678. This was the first American appearance of the man-of-signs, but it was a popular image; as Sinclair Hitchings has shown, it was used over and over again.8 A major feature of the almanacs was the monthly appraisal of the moon’s phases and the positions of the other signs of the zodiac for the farmer and the gardener. In various anatomical versions the man-of-signs appeared and reappeared throughout the literature of many centuries prior to the period of this paper. John Foster probably copied his image from an English almanac.

Another, and more purely scientific purpose which these crude woodcuts served was to illustrate the principles of the lunar eclipse. The first of these (Fig. 104), published in 1703 in Samuel Clough’s Almanack (Boston), shows two positions of the moon in its revolution around the earth. Another (Fig. 105), published in 1704, also by Clough, shows “how the eclipse of the moon may be either total, partial, or not at all.” And a third (Fig. 106), published by Bo wen in 1723, shows the earth and moon in relation to the sun. All of these have a bold and appealing aesthetic quality and the faces are quite wonderful; the similarities to the contemporary gravestone carving may well be more than accidental. But they are still diagrams, showing schematic movements of celestial bodies, rather than precise illustrations of specific objects, which, it seems to me, is the most accurate basic definition of scientific illustration. Let us turn, then, to some more or less precise illustrations of specific subjects.

103. The Man of Signs, published in 1678

The earliest prints of this sort which I have found are of zoological subjects, four crude woodcuts of a bull, a horse, a ram, and a hog in John Smith, The Husbandman’s Magazine (Boston, 1718), the only known copy of which (Fig. 107) is owned by the American Antiquarian Society.9 It would be convenient to suggest that these were drawn from nature, rather than copied from an earlier printed source. But I am convinced that they are copies.10 In England and Europe in the early years of printing there was a long tradition, in fact going back to antiquity, of copying illustrations from earlier printed or manuscript sources, with an increasing loss of meaning and clarity each time. One of the great steps forward in the incunable period of printed scientific illustration was the act of drawing specimens “from nature” rather than copying them from an earlier source.11 But what I suspect we have here, well into the eighteenth century, is a reversion to the act of copying. The model was probably a seventeenth- or early-eighteenth-century English farming manual, such, for example, as James Lambert, The Countryman’s Treasure (London, 1683), with cuts.12 According to the notes in The Colonial Scene exhibition catalogue these four cuts may have been executed by James Franklin, brother of Benjamin, who is known to have possessed some skill at engraving in the woodcut manner.13

104. Eclipse diagram, published in 1703

105. Eclipse diagram, published in 1704

106. Eclipse diagram, published in 1723

107. The Bull, 1718

108. Skunk cabbage, published in London, 1672

The bull is the last American-made print to be considered here; at this point we turn our attention to English illustrations of American subjects. Omitting John White’s watercolor drawings of flora and fauna of Roanoke, Virginia (they are one hundred years earlier than the period covered by this paper), we may pause to look at several crude cuts (Figs. 108 and 109) in John Josselyn’s New-Englands Rarities Discovered (London, 1672). These are of no special merit for their scientific value; indeed, Joseph Ewan, the distinguished historian of American botany, has called them mere “caricatures.”14 But they are worthy of notice for several reasons; first, they would appear to be based on drawings which were made from nature, or at least from specimens, rather than copied from earlier sources. The two cuts shown here are of the skunk cabbage and the jewelweed or touch-me-not. We are told by Steams that this is the first illustration and description of the skunk cabbage.15 One of the basic functions of all good illustration is to expand upon and form an integral unit with the text; in the most basic sort of way that is the case here, as shown in the text accompanying the cut of the skunk cabbage:

109. Jewel weed, published in London, 1672

This plant is one of the first that springs up after White Hellibore, in the like wet and black grounds, with a sheath or hood like dragons, but the pestle is of another shape, having a round purple ball on the top of it beset (as it were) with burs, the hood shoots forth immediately from the root, before any leaf appears, having a green sprig growing fast by it like the smaller horse tayl.

It is curious that Josselyn did not mention the smell of this noxious plant. The Josselyn cuts are somewhat of a problem in their extreme crudity; they are on about the same level of competence, if not below, the American cuts attributed to James Franklin, yet they were done in London, where skillful engravers were easily found. Why did not Josselyn or his publisher, Widdowes, employ a more skillful engraver? Probably because of financial reasons. Indeed, one suspects that Josselyn might have done his own illustrating and engraving, so poor are the cuts. But they are nevertheless an exactly repeatable pictorial statement and they are worthy of mention at least because they served to illustrate the most complete natural history of the colonial era, to be superseded only after the Revolutionary War, by Manasseh Cutler in 1785.16

In all of the woodcuts we have seen thus far there is a similarity to most of the natural history illustrations (also woodcuts) of the incunabula period, that is to say from c. 1475 to 1500. The one significant difference would seem to be the fact that Josselyn’s illustrations were based on nature (though there were also a few notable exceptions among the incunables, such as the Gart de Gesundheit, 1485). But the quality of realism, so basic to the principle and purpose of scientific illustration, has been singularly absent. But there were at that same time other artists, engravers, and publishers who could and did produce much more accurate illustrations. Let us now turn to some of these.

110. Blackbird and ear of corn, published in London, 1651

In rather sharp contrast to the Josselyn cuts is a small engraved frontispiece (Fig. 110) to an excessively rare twenty-four-page pamphlet by Edward Bland called The Discovery of New Britaine, published some nineteen years earlier than the above work, in 1651. Because of the considerable accuracy of this illustration (Professor Ewan tells us that it was identified by McAtee, 1955, as a blackbird)17 it would be most interesting to know who made the drawing. A possible clue might be found in Francis Willoughby’s Ornithology (London, 1678). Some of Willoughby’s plates were engraved by William Faithorne and the similarity of these, and especially the caption lettering, to the Bland frontispiece, is notable. Whoever made the original drawing for the blackbird obviously had a real blackbird to copy (and also an ear of corn). Whether these were actually drawn in America or in London is impossible to say; more probably the latter, with the artist working from a specimen, as there were even in the 1650’s many collections of natural history objects going to London. The fact that illustrations of this quality and Josselyn’s quality were being published at more or less the same time is an indication that there was no such thing as standards of quality in scientific illustration. The sole motivation for publishing of any kind at this period would seem to have been the profit motive, as indeed it largely still is, though we do of course now have university-, museum-, and government-sponsored and supported scientific publications, which largely came into being in this country in the nineteenth century.

But good or bad, both Josselyn and Bland were peripheral at best, and not truly products of a trained scientist. In seventeenth-century America there was really only one outstanding naturalist and scientific illustrator, John Banister (1654–92) of Virginia. It has elsewhere18 been pointed out that Banister executed the first detailed and careful drawings of the flora of North America, and he is the subject of a recently published full-scale scholarly treatise by the inimitable Joseph and Nesta Ewan.19 Educated at Oxford in botany and natural philosophy, Banister came to Virginia in 1676 as a clergyman for the Church of England.

He began at once observing, collecting and describing in Latin phrases the plants . . . he found there . . . In the remarkably short span of three years he assembled a catalogue of the plants he had found, noting their relationships with European species, or suggesting possible alliances with European species if the plants were totally new to him. Made acutely aware of the value of preparing a graphic record, he taught himself to draw, and fifty-three of his sixty-five drawings survive in the British Museum, the majority published, sometimes modified, and with or without acknowledgement to their source, by Plukenet (1691–1705) whose Phystographia was extensively used by Linnaeus in his works on American botany.20

In their book the Ewans reproduce all of the known Banister drawings but only one of Plukenet’s engravings. As it seemed germane to this study to determine how closely the engraver did (or did not) adhere to Banister’s drawings, I carefully went through the Yale copy of Phystographia, comparing the engravings with the original drawings as illustrated in the Ewans’ book. Where the drawings were straightforward, self-contained, and without special instructions to the engraver, the fidelity is high, the only major difference being, naturally, that the engraving is a mirror image of the drawing. That is well illustrated, for example, in the Jack-in-the-pulpit (Fig. 111 and Fig. 6 in Ewan, Banister). But where there are special instructions to the engraver, as in the case of the shooting star, the engraver seems to have lost control. In Banister’s original drawing (Fig. 45 in Ewan) he gives the following special instructions: “NB Let ye graver make the stalk 2 or 3 inches shorter for by inadvertance it is made so much too long.” In the finished engraving (Fig. 112) we see that the stalk is not only much shorter, but omits the root structure and leaf formation altogether. In fact, the engraving departs so far from the original drawing in this case that there seems a possibility that this plate was engraved after another drawing, but if so, that drawing is lost. It is especially curious that in Banister’s drawing the blooms should be closed whereas in the engraving they are open. But there is no doubt that they both represent the same flower.

111. Jack-in-the-pulpit by Banister as engraved in London, 1691

112. Shooting star by Banister as engraved in London, 1691

We know that Banister carefully thought through the matter of making drawings, for he goes into this at length in a letter to Plukenet written from Virginia in 1682 and now preserved among the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum. Pointing out that the use of dried plant specimens can lead one into many errors, Banister writes,

I betook myself therefore to drawing which how well I have or with a little more practice I may perform I must leave to you and others to be judges of. Only first let me acquaint you with the method I use. I first consider the height of the plant or that part at least that I intend to describe upon the paper. The next thing I take notice of is, the length of the paper I intend to draw the plant upon to whidth [sic] of proportion the whole plant: root leaves stalk flowers &c. so that where (in those draughts) you meet with any decimall number as that is to 100 so is that plant upon the paper to the plant as it grows and when you meet with this the one of equality = it follows the draught upon the paper is just that bigness of that by which it was drawn.21

There is another point of interest in this connection, which is mentioned in Banister’s letters. William Byrd, who we know ordered a wide variety of imports for Virginians or helped facilitate their import, wrote to his agent in London in 1686 for “Salmon’s Polygraphice last edition.”22 The context of the letter makes it clear that this was ordered for Banister’s use. William Salmon’s Polygraphice or the arts of drawing, engraving, etching, limning, painting, varnishing, japanning, gilding, etc. was a standard and very popular seventeenth-century manual published about 1672, with many later editions, an eighth being published in 1701. It contained chapters which would have been useful to Banister, as a beginner, on “The Limning and Colouring of Flowers” (Chap. 43); “Of the Limning of Fowls” (Chap. 46); “Of the Limning of Beasts” (Chap. 46), etc. And in another letter written to the collector James Petiver, Banister himself asks for “3 or 4 quire of good paper for draughts.”23 As Professor Ewan has said, if John Banister had lived beyond his thirty-eight years he would certainly have profoundly altered the course of science in colonial America. But even such work as he did do clearly establishes him as the leading scientific observer and illustrator of his century and the most important person in this field until the appearance in 1712 of Mark Catesby.

Catesby has been so well and thoroughly studied that we need not dwell on him for long here.24 His great achievement was, of course, the two-volume Natural History of the Carolinas Florida and the Bahama Islands published in parts between 1731 and 1743. He tells us in his preface that “while not bred a painter” he made all the drawings himself, most while the specimens were alive, or, in the case of plants, “while fresh and just gathered.” He further tells us that he “was initiated in the way of etching them myself, which I have not done in a graver-like manner, choosing rather to omit their method of cross hatching, and to follow the humour of the feathers, which is more labourious, and I hope has proved more to the purpose.” And in the matter of coloring he says:

The illuminating of natural history is so particularly essential to the perfect understanding of it, that I may aver a clearer idea may be conceived from the figures of animals and plants in their proper colours, than from the most exact description without them: wherefore I have been less prolix in the description, judging it unnecessary to tire the reader with describing every feather, yet, I hope I have said enough to distinguish them without confusion.

Furthermore, he says:

of the paints, particularly greens, used in the illumination of figures, I had principally a regard to those most resembling nature, that were durable and would retain their lustre, rejecting others very specious and shining, but of an unnatural colour and fading quality. Yet give me leave to observe, there is no degree of green, but what some plants are possessed at different times of the year, and the same plant changes its colour gradually with its age: for in the spring, the woods and all plants in general are more yellow and bright; and as the summer advances, the greens grow deeper, and the nearer their fall, are yet of a more dark and dirty colour. What I infer from this is, that by comparing a painting with a living plant, the difference of colour, if any, may proceed from the above-mentioned cause.

These are valuable observations as they deal directly with the fundamental problems and concerns of the scientific illustrator. The scientific accuracy of the bird plates has been analyzed by Elsa G. Allen25 and while Frick and Steams have produced a model study of Catesby himself, with much on his book and its illustrations, there is not as yet a study of the scientific accuracy of the botanical portion of the Natural History. Such a study would prove helpful, but it is not likely to change the position of Catesby as a “pioneer in the field of scientific illustration.”26

Finally, we bring this rambling survey up to the terminal date of this conference, 1775, and thus to a close. It is a quite remarkable fact that there should have been no really significant illustrated scientific books on American flora or fauna between the period of Catesby and William Bartram in 1791. The very fine watercolor drawings made by William Bartram for Dr. John Fothergill, 1766–76, had to wait until 1968 before they were published in anywhere near their entirety.27 Both John Bartram and his son William did, of course, make many drawings in America and some of these were published in England and Europe but in no case were they illustrations for books primarily devoted to American natural history. As an example, the younger Bartram contributed many specimens of American birds to George Edwards’ Gleanings of Natural History (London, 1758–64). There is one other important source of engraved scientific illustrations of American flora and fauna of this period which I have not been able to investigate, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, first published in March 1665. Most of the illustrations in this important periodical were drawn and engraved in London from specimens sent in by field collectors working in America, and thus are in most cases not drawn from life. As noted above, the earliest illustrated scientific book written and published in America that I know of is William Bartram’s Travels through North and South Carolina, and this did not appear until 1791. In summary, therefore, I think it can safely be said that engraved scientific illustration produced in America prior to 1775 was practically nonexistent; such of it as there was was produced in England or Europe, and the best (i.e., most accurate) of this was engraved after drawings made on the spot in America from living specimens. American publishing and illustrating in the field of science and descriptive natural history really got under way only after the turn of the nineteenth century.

I would like to thank Professor Joseph Ewan of Tulane University for invaluable help and suggestions. Also my thanks to Dr. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., of the American Philosophical Society, and Marcus McCorison of the American Antiquarian Society. All of the illustrations were made from books owned by the American Antiquarian Society.

1 George Francis Dow, The Arts & Crafts in New England, 1704–1775 (Topsfield, Mass., 1927; reprinted: New York, 1967), p. 27.

2 James Clements Wheat and Christian F. Brun, Maps and Charts Published in America Before 1800: A Bibliography (New Haven, 1969), pp. 50–53.

3 The map by Capt. Cyprian Southack shows the English colonies in North America. The John Carter Brown copy is untitled; that in the Public Record Office has this title in manuscript: “A New Chart of the English Empire in North America by Captain Cyprian Southack.” Both show the following engraved signature: “Engraven and Printed by Fra Dewing Boston New England. 1717.” Lawrence C. Wroth and Marion W. Adams, American Woodcuts and Engravings, 1670–1800 (Providence, 1946), pp. 16–17; Wheat and Brun, p. 8. An earlier copper plate map may have been printed in America although the circumstances of its publication do not seem to have been firmly established. See Charles Harper Walsh, “The Earliest Copper Engraving Executed in the American Colonies,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, xv (1912), 54–72. Dewing engraved another Southack map in 1720, “The Harbour and Island of Canso Part of the Boundaries of Nova Scotia” (Wheat and Brun, p. 13). That Dewing was thought to have been involved in a different aspect of his trade is mentioned by Winsor in his discussion of the Boston plan of 1722: “The engraver of this map is probably the same Francis Doing, who in 1718, as appears by the Council Records, was suspected of being concerned in counterfeiting the Province bills of credit. There is no evidence known to sustain the case.” Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1882), ii, liii.

4 I. N. Phelps Stokes and Daniel C. Haskell, American Historical Prints: Early Views of American Cities (New York, 1932), p. 20.

5 One and perhaps two plans or views of Boston had been published prior to 1722. No copies have survived, and brief references in contemporary correspondence provide our only information. Wait Winthrop, writing to his brother on July 20, 1680, stated: “I haue sent you a map of the towne, with Charlestowne, taken by Mr. Foster the printer, from Nodles Island. Twas sent for Amsterdam, and y^r printed.” Six years later Judge Samuel Sewall wrote Edward Hull: “There is inclosed in the top, a Mapp of this Town which please to accept off” (Henry H. Edes, “The Burgis-Price View of Boston,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1906–1907, p. 245). The letters can be found in Winthrop Papers, iv, 421, and Sewall Letter Book, i, 32.

6 As quoted in Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, 1963), p. 7.

7 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1891), pp. 159, 162.

8 William Wood, New Englands Prospect, as quoted in Shurtleff, p. 41.

9 As quoted in Shurtleff, p. 160.

10 As quoted in Shurtleff, p. 62. Bonner had drawn a view of Long Wharf in 1714 and obviously used this in compiling his plan of the city. Bonner’s manuscript drawing of the wharf is reproduced in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 1863–1864 (Boston, 1864), facing p. 477.

11 The Boston Gazette for April 19–26, 1725, carried an advertisement by William Price for a view of Boston and “Also an exact Plan of the Town, shewing the Streets, Lanes, and Publick Buildings” Dow, pp. 16–17. The view was the Burgis view described below. The plan was undoubtedly Bonner’s as reissued by Price.

12 My description of the additions and erasures from one state of the Bonner plan to another follows the useful analysis provided in Wheat and Brun. Even their minute examination of various states fails to distinguish all differences. For example, they fail to note that vertical rules in the legend and shoreline hatching were added on State ii.

13 A copy in the Massachusetts Historical Society is the only known impression, but George Smith in 1835 published a facsimile of this when it belonged to William Taylor. The facsimile omits some material and mistakenly gives Bonner’s age as 60 rather than 80.

14 Dow, pp. 15–17. For some details about Price see Emma Forbes Waite, “William Price of Boston: Map-Maker, Merchant and Churchman,” Old-Time New England, xlvi (1956), 52–56.

15 Wheat and Brun, who apparently examined the original impression in the John Carter Brown Library, state unequivocally that “traces of the erasure of ‘T. JOHNSON SCULP’ still remain.”

16 An earlier plan by Carleton in 1796 measured only 8¼ by 14¼ inches. His 1797 plan was on a scale of one inch to 21 rods (about 350 feet) and was an impressive 37⅜ by 41 inches in size. Wheat and Brun, p. 246.

17 Edes, p. 246; Dow, pp. 15–16.

18 The view was announced in the Boston Gazette for April 19–26, 1725, as “A New and Correct Prospect of the Town of Boston, curiously Engraved on Copper, according to the Proposal some time ago printed in this paper.” A second advertisement appeared in the New-England Courant for July 24–31, 1725 (Dow, pp. 16–17).

19 The complete text of the engraved description can be found in Edes, pp. 248–249. Since Price’s advertisement for subscriptions in December 1723 stated that the drawing from which the engraving would be made was then on view at his shop, the year of depiction would seem to be clearly established. The date of c. 1722 assigned in the Stokes Collection catalogue is probably erroneous (Stokes and Haskell, p. 20).

20 Ibid., pp. 20–21. This imprint appears to have been engraved by another hand and may well have been added by Price in Boston after he received the plate from John Harris in London.

21 For the deduction by Justin Winsor, after his study of the 1743 state, that there must have been an earlier version, see Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xviii (1880–81), 68–69. Winsor evidently learned subsequently of the existence of the British Museum copy, wrote in 1884 to his fellow Bostonian C. C. Smith, asking him to examine it, and Smith reported his finding to the Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2d ser., i (1884–85), 249–250.

22 Dow, p. 20.

23 The Burgis view of Harvard College was first advertised in the Boston News-Letter for July 7–14, 1726, as follows: “This Day is Published a Prospect of the Colleges in Cambridge in New England, curiously Engraven in Copper; and are to be sold at Mr. Price’s Print-seller, over against the Town-House, Mr. Randal Jappaner in Ann Street, by Mr. Stedman in Cambridge, and the Booksellers of Boston” (Dow, p. 18).

24 Clarence S. Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester, 1954), pp. 60, 134.

25 Brigham, p. 59, gives the text of Revere’s advertisement along with a detailed discussion of the view and a full-size color facsimile of it.

26 Ibid., pp. 79–80.

27 A copy is in the Sinclair Hamilton Collection, Princeton University. The plan is briefly described in Peter J. Guthorn, American Maps and Map Makers of the Revolution (Monmouth Beach, N.J., 1966), pp. 36–37. The artist is unknown, but Guthorn gives the publisher as Robertsons and Trumbull.

28 Arthur Gilman, The Story of Boston (New York, 1889), pp. 281–289.

29 Winsor, ii, xxxii. Winsor in identifying property owners by reference to the Bonner plan states that in the 1720’s the lot on which the tree stood was owned by Garret Bourne.

30 Pelham was born in Boston on Mar. 14, 1748/9, the only son of Mary Singleton Copley Pelham by her second husband, Peter Pelham. Henry’s father died in 1751, and it was doubtless from his half brother, John Singleton Copley, eleven years his senior, that Henry learned to draw and paint. Copley’s portrait of Henry, probably not then more than ten, is known by the title, The Boy and the Squirrel. See Denison Rogers Slade, “Henry Pelham, the Half-Brother of John Singleton Copley,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1897, 1898 (Boston, 1902), pp. 194, 196.

31 James [?] Johnson to Henry Pelham, Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, lxxi (1914), 350.

32 Pelham to Copley, Aug. 19, 1775. Pelham then added that he had been advised by General Gage “that it would not be altogether proper to publish a plan of Charlestown in its present state, as it would furnish those without with a knowledge of the fortification [s] erected there and in a polite manner desired I would postpone the sending it at present” (ibid., p. 351).

33 Philip Lee Phillips, for many years chief of the Library of Congress Division of Maps, regarded this map as the most valuable single sheet acquisition during his long tenure in that position (conversation with his former assistant, Mrs. Clara E. Le Gear, Washington, 1968).

34 Pelham to Copley, Jan. 27, 1776, Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, pp. 367–368.

1 A Volume of Records Relating to the History of Boston, Twenty-Ninth Report (Boston, 1900), p. 273.

2 Dunlap, History of the Arts of Design in America, Bayley and Goodspeed, eds. (Boston, 1918), ii, 286.

3 John H. Edmonds, “The Burgis Views of New York and Boston,” Proceedings of the Bostonian Society (Boston, 1915), pp. 29–33.

4 J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits (London, 1884), p. liii.

5 Edmonds, pp. 33–37.

6 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xix, 104–106.

7 Hamilton Vaughan Bail, Views of Harvard, a Pictorial Record to 1860 (Cambridge, 1949), p. 41.

8 Edmonds, p. 49.

9 Barbara Owen, The Organs and Music of King’s Chapel (Boston, King’s Chapel, 1966), pp. 5 and 7.

10 Cecil Clutton and Austin Niland, The British Organ (London, B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 1963), pp. 217 and 219.

11 Edmonds, p. 49.

12 Edmonds, p. 50.

13 William Loring Andrews, The Bradford Map (New York, 1893), p. 21.

1 Johnston’s trade card is reproduced in Joseph Downs’s article on “American Japanned Furniture” in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, xxviii, No. 3 (March 1933), 44; in The Walpole Society Note Book (1935), opposite p. 33, with notes by Philip Leffingwell Spalding; and in George Francis Dow’s article on “Trade Cards,” Old-Time New England, xxvi (April, 1936), 115–137. A second installment of Dow’s article appeared in Old-Time New England, xxvii (July, 1936), 3–22. The card, as Spalding explains, was found on the back of the inside of a clock made by Benjamin Bagnall (1689–1773) of Boston. Spalding writes: “The case, which is of pine, undoubtedly was japanned at one time, but was refinished in the natural wood before it came into my possession.” Paradoxically, the only japanned piece of furniture for which there is clear evidence showing that Johnston provided the decorations is this clock, which no longer has its japanning! Downs attributed several pieces of japanned furniture to Johnston, but was never able to put together a clear and well-documented description of Johnston’s style. He was forced to reason entirely from the evidence of Johnston’s trade card. See his American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), item 187; also p. xiv and item 188.

2 The American Antiquarian Society owns a water color coat of arms made for the Mather family and in 1814 given to the society by Hannah Mather Crocker. Harold Bowditch attributed the picture to Thomas Johnston, and his opinion is preserved in a note on the back of the frame. Bowditch also attributed to Johnston a painting on canvas in oils of the Barton arms, thought to have been made as a funeral hatchment; it is owned by the Essex Institute. See “Early Water-Color Paintings of New England Coats of Arms” by Dr. Harold Bowditch, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv (Boston, 1951), Fig. 18 and pp. 200–201.

3 I am grateful to Mrs. Fales for her analysis of Johnston’s engraved heraldic and emblematic designs, presented in this volume and extremely helpful to me in compiling a new and more comprehensive listing of Johnston’s prints.

4 Alan Burroughs, John Greenwood in America 1745–1752 (Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, 1943), p. 74; also pp. 12 and 80.

5 Copperplate printing continued to be a part of Rea’s business. In March 1770 he sent Henry Pelham a bill for “Printing 575 of your Prints @ 12 /Pr. Hund. 319:” This presumably was the first of the Boston Massacre prints, copied by Paul Revere and made familiar by him in the course of his energetic campaign to spread it abroad. See Brigham’s Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester, 1954), pp. 41–42.

6 Later, Nathaniel Hurd (1729–77) and Joseph Callender (1751–1821) were among the engravers who found additional business engraving compass cards.

7 Burroughs, John Greenwood in America, p. 12.

8 Burroughs, pp. 64 and 80; Harriette M. Forbes, Gravestones of Early New England (Boston, 1927), pp. 59–60. The stone, which survives in Copps Hill Buyring Ground, is reproduced by Forbes opposite p. 43. There is also discussion of the funeral decorations in Flexner’s American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 242.

9 Mary Kent Davey Babcock printed the list of subscribers to the organ in her Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston (Boston, 1947), pp. 241–242. Esther Stevens Brazier analyzed the inventory of Davis’ estate in “The Early Boston Japanners,” Antiques, xliii, No. 5 (May 1943).

10 In the Boston Gazette of June 27, 1763, Lewis Deblois advertised for sale “an Organ, made by Mr. Thomas Johnston of this Town, formerly made Use of in Concert-Hall, and can be recommended.—An abatement of Ten Guineas will be made, (from the real Value of said Instrument) if bought and made Use of for any Congregation in this Town.”

The inventory of Johnston’s estate is indispensable to an understanding of his many-faceted business. It is printed in full at the end of this article.

11 The property listed in his inventory was valued at a total of £912:1:10, including “The Mansion House and Land & house up the Yard” which were valued at £666:13:4.

12 Lawrence Wroth in The Walpole Society Note Book (1950), p. 30. See also Wroth’s article, “The Thomas Johnston Maps of the Kennebeck Purchase,” In Tribute to Fred Anthoensen Master Printer, ed. Ruth A. Chaplin (Portland, Me., 1952). This detailed study was a breakthrough to much fuller understanding of Johnston’s skills and conduct of business.

13 James Thomas Flexner in American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 311 (see entry for John Greenwood), says that Johnston was an “engraver, printer, designer of gravestones, painter of houses, fire buckets, ships, and almost certainly portraits.” The houses, fire buckets, and ships are mentioned in the Rea and Johnston account books dating from after Thomas Johnston’s death; Flexner was reasoning back from that evidence. (Today we know about Johnston’s house-painting from the bill of 1764 to Samuel P. Savage printed in this article.) On the subject of possible portraits by Johnston, Flexner cites (p. 284) an entry in the inventory of Johnston’s estate listing portraits of Dr. Mayhew and Mr. Gee and says that these were “probably painted by himself.” There is at least an equal chance, however, that they were painted by someone else; a portrait of Joshua Gee, for instance, was painted by John Smibert (The Notebook of John Smibert [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969], p. 91). Lila Parrish Lyman in her excellent article on William Johnston (1732–72) in the New-York Historical Society Quarterly, xxxix (January 1955), 63, calls Thomas Johnston “a portrait and heraldic painter, japanner and engraver.” Sidney Gunn, who is one of the authorities she cites, had written in his sketch of Johnston, published in the Dictionary of American Biography in 1933, “There is a portrait attributed to him in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and another is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society.” Today the portrait in the Boston Museum cannot be identified, while the well-modelled and convincing pastel portrait of Dudley Atkins at the Massachusetts Historical Society represents a mastery of portraiture in a difficult medium which would be surprising for someone who, if he did paint portraits, tried his hand at it only occasionally. A more tempting reference to Johnston as a portrait painter is provided by Jules Prown in his comments on John Singleton Copley’s portrait of John Codman, the eldest of three John Codmans whom Copley painted. According to Prown, this portrait “is said to be a copy after a painting by Thomas Johnston, taken to England from Boston by the sitter’s son, . . .” (John Singleton Copley in England 1774–1815 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966], p. 377).

14 All three of the Copley portraits can be seen in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

1 Anne Allison, “Peter Pelham, Engraver in Mezzotinto,” Antiques, lii (Dec. 1947), 441–443. See also Frederick W. Coburn, “More Notes on Peter Pelham,” Art in America, xx (June–Aug. 1932), 143–154.

2 John Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotint Portraits, 4 vols. (London, 1884), iii, 964–978.

3 Boston Gazette, Feb. 19–26, Feb. 26–Mar. 4, 1728.

4 “Boston, March the 19th. 1727/8.

“Received of the Rev’d. Mr. Benjn Coleman the Sum of 3 shillings being the first Payment of the Subscription for a Print in Metzo:^o of the Late Rev. Dr. COTTON MATHER, by which the Bearer is Entitled to the said Print Paying 2 shillings at the Delivery of the same. By me Peter Pelham.” Reproduced in facsimile in Guernsey Jones (ed.), Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Vol. lxxi (Boston, 1914), p. 5; hereafter cited as Copley-Pelham Letters.

5 Boston Gazette, May 20–27, June 10–17, 1728.

6 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 32.

7 Boston Gazette, Aug. 18–25, 1729.

8 Quoted in Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 3 vols. (Boston, 1882), 1, 397.

9 Boston News-Letter, Dec. 23, 1731.

10 John Tasker Howard, The Music of George Washington’s Time (Washington, 1931), p. 9.

11 Boston Gazette, Nov. 13–20, 1732. The game was continued in the following issue of the Gazette, Nov. 27–Dec 4, when an unnamed writer replied indignantly to the former notice, stating that he “could not help being very much pleas’d at the Sight of such a Number of agreeable Ladies as appear’d at Mr. Pelham’s; where every Body seem’d to be well Satisfy’d, and a Chearful & Innocent Conversation was carried on, with open & honest Faces, and all Mankind must allow, that such a Society well Regulated, is the best School for a true and polite behaviour.”

12 William K. Bottorff, “Peter Pelham, Late of Boston,” The New-England Galaxy, Winter 1970, p. 37.

13 Boston Gazette, Jan. 1–8, 1733.

14 Boston Gazette, Apr. 5, 1734, quoted in George Francis Dow, The Arts& Crafts in New England 1704–1773 (Topsfield, Mass., 1927), p. 11.

15 Sir David Evans, John Kerslake, and Andrew Oliver (eds.), The Notebook of John Smibert (Boston, 1969), pp. 87–91.

16 Ebenezer Turell, The Life and Character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman (Boston, 1749), p. 23.

17 James T. Flexner, First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 195.

18 Original parish records of Trinity Church, Newport, vol. entitled “List of Baptized Persons”; in the possession of Trinity Church, Newport.

19 Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, 2d ed. (New York, 1955), p. 441.

20 Bridenbaugh, p. 355.

21 Records of Boston Selectmen.

22 Boston Gazette, Jan. 16–23, Feb. 6, 1738.

23 Boston Gazette, May 1–8, 1738.

24 For Pelham’s Masonic connections see Melvin M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (New York, 1924), and Harvey N. Shepard, History of St. Johns Lodge (Boston, 1917).

25 Boston Gazette, Sept. 25, Oct. 23, 1741.

26 The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., reprint (Gloucester, 1962), 1, 270, July 2, 1791.

27 Sibleys Harvard Graduates, viii, 48.

28 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 3.

29 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 14.

30 Original minutes of the vestry of Trinity Church, unpublished, in the possession of Trinity Church, Boston.

31 The News-Letter, May 10, 1744.

32 Boston Gazette, Aug. 27, 1751.

33 Boston Gazette, Sept. 16, 1746.

34 Boston Evening Post, July 7, 1747, quoted in Dow, p. 35.

35 Boston Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1749.

36 Boston Gazette, July 12, 1748.

37 Boston Gazette, Sept. 20, 1748.

38 Boston Gazette, Mar. 21, 1749.

39 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 18.

40 Alan Burroughs, John Greenwood in America (Andover, Mass., 1943), p. 79.

41 The News-Letter, May 24, 1750.

42 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 19.

43 Boston Gazette, Mar. 12, 1751.

44 Boston Gazette, Sept. 17, 1751.

45 Burroughs, Greenwood, pp. 18 and 69; The News-Letter, July 18, 1751.

46 Boston Gazette, Aug. 4, 1752.

47 Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 1, 162.

48 Smith, iii, 966.

1 Sydney P. Noe, The Pine Tree Coinage of Massachusetts (New York, 1952), pp. 21–22.

2 Hermann Frederick Clarke, John Coney, Silversmith, 1655–1722 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932), pp. 9–10, pi. xxxi. Andrew McFarland Davis, “The Massachusetts Bay Currency, 1690–1750, The Plates,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xii (October 1898), 410–424.

3 Hermann Frederick Clarke and Henry Wilder Foote, Jeremiah Dummer, Colonial Craftsman & Merchant, 1645–1718 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1935), p. 27, pl. xxii.

4 Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 101, No. 525.

5 During the summer following the print conference, Sinclair Hitchings discovered at the New Hampshire Historical Society proof that John Coney was paid for engraving the plates for New Hampshire bills in 1722. The manuscript treasurer’s accounts for New Hampshire record:

“By Sundry paym^ṭs since May y^e 18^th 1722

M^ṛ Allen print^g. y^e Bills p^d £18..10

M^ṛ Cunny doing the plates p^d £15..10”

6 Matt B. Jones, in “The Early Massachusetts-Bay Seals,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, ns 44 (April to October 1934), 13–44, believed that the Cambridge seal had been cut in England. Recent scholars suggest that it may also have been cut by John Foster but proof is lacking and the question raised by Jones as to why the 1675 cut should be inferior to the 1672 cut if both were the work of Foster remains unanswered. Richard B. Holman, “Seventeenth-Century American Prints,” Prints in and of America to 1830 (The University Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 33–35.

7 Richard Le Baron Bowen, Massachusetts Records (privately printed, Rehobeth, Mass., 1957), pp. 48–52.

8 Louis F. Middlebrook, Seals of Maritime New England (Salem, Mass: The Essex Institute, 1926), pp. 8–10.

9 Hollis French, Jacob Hurd and His Sons (The Walpole Society: Cambridge, Mass., 1939), p. 70.

10 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), iii, 144–146.

11 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), iv, 205–206.

12 Samuel Eliot Morison, “Harvard Seals and Arms,” The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, Sept. 1933, pp. 1–15, and letter to the author from Harley P. Holden, Assistant Curator, Harvard University Archives, April 16, 1971.

13 Addenda to French’s Jacob Hurd and His Sons (1941 ed.), pp. 7–8.

14 Ibid.

15 French, pp. 67–69.

16 Middlebrook, p. 40. Dewing was suspected in 1718 of being concerned with counterfeiting the province bills of credit according to Justin Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, ii, liii.

17 The first American bookplate apparently was the bordered name plate used by Thomas Smith of Boston and dated 1707 (Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 [Princeton, N.J., 1958], p. xxv). Other early armorial bookplates used by Americans were engraved in England.

18 Suffolk County Court House, #14045. Harold Bowditch suggested that this book may have been the 1724 edition of Guillim subsequently owned by the heraldic painter John Coles of Boston (“Early Water-Color Paintings of New England Coats of Arms,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv (December 1944), 178).

19 Mary Means, “Early American Trade Cards,” (Master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1958).

20 The History of Printing in America by Isaiah Thomas, edited by Marcus A. McCorison from the second edition (Barre, Mass.: Imprint Society, 1970), p. 256. I am indebted to Sinclair Hitchings for calling this and other related materials to my attention.

21 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, iii, 145.

22 Bowditch, “Early Water-Color Paintings,” pp. 179–181. Although Bowditch believed there were two different James Turners, one from Boston and one from Marblehead, it now appears that James Turner whose bill to the estate of William Lynde was inscribed Marblehead, 1752, is the same James Turner who also worked in Boston, and later moved to Philadelphia.

23 In Massachusetts the encircling snake was used as a design on the gravestone of Mrs. Susannah Jayne of Marblehead in 1776 and on Massachusetts bills and lotteries in 1777–79. In Philadelphia in 1775 the snake was used to enclose a patriotic emblem advertising an American edition of Swan’s Designs in Architecture to be published by Robert Bell and John Norman.

24 The bill of Paul Revere for engraving the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, dated Aug. 5, 1775, is preserved at the Massachusetts State House.

1 The only study of this specific subject known to me is my “Prints and Scientific Illustration in America,” in Prints in and of America to 1850 (Winterthur, Del., & Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 161–191. This study is concerned mainly with early nineteenth-century illustration.

2 Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958).

3 Barbara Gelman, The Wood Engravings of Winslow Homer (New York: Crown, 1969). On the general subject of early American book illustration see Georgia C. Haugh, “The Beginnings of American Book Illustration,” in Francis J. Brewer (ed.), Book Illustration (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1963), pp. 34–44.

4 The best single study is Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

5 William Smellie, An Abridgement of the Practice of Midwifery (Boston: J. Norman, 1786).

6 Richard B. Holman, “Seventeenth Century American Prints,” in Prints in and of America to 1850, pp. 23–52.

7 I have not been able to determine exactly when the first copperplate intaglio print for scientific purposes was employed, but it was certainly within the time span of this paper.

8 Unpublished research notes of Sinclair Hitchings, in a letter to the author dated March 19, 1971.

9 A long note on this book is given in The Colonial Scene (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1950), pp. 32–33.

10 As indicated especially by the elegant upswept tail of the bull, a stylized convention which probably has its origin in “high art.”

11 W. M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), Chap. 2.

12 As illustrated in Pl. 15 of G. E. Fussell, The Old English Farming Books From Fitzherbert to Tull 1523 to 1730 (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1947).

13 See note 9.

14 Joseph Ewan (ed.), William Bartram Botanical and Zoological Drawings 1756–1788 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968), p. 4.

15 Stearns, p. 144.

16 Manasseh Cutler, “An Account of Some of the Vegetable Productions Naturally Growing in this part of America Botanically Arranged,” Memoirs of the American Academy, 1 (1785).

17 Ewan, p. 4.

18 Bruce R. Voeller and Paul F. Cranefield, Three Centuries of Botany in North America, an Exhibit (New York: The Rockefeller University, 1967), p. 8.

19 Joseph and Nesta Ewan, John Banister and his Natural History of Virginia 1678–1692 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

20 Joseph Ewan, “First Fern Records from Virginia: John Banister’s Account of 1679–1692,” American Fern Journal, 53 (Oct.–Dec. 1963), 138.

21 Ewan, John Banister, pp. 74–75.

22 Ibid., p. 51.

23 Ibid., p. 83.

24 George F. Frick and R. P. Stearns, Mark Catesby: The Colonial Audubon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).

25 Elsa G. Allen, The History of American Ornithology before Audubon (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969), pp. 463–477.

26 Voeller and Cranefield, p. 10.

27 See note 14.

1 I have seen photographs of the Schenck prints, through the courtesy of Mrs. Carl Dolmetsch, assistant curator of prints at Colonial Williamsburg, where examples are to be found.

2 Since this paper was read in Boston, I have learned of William G. Sturtevant’s paper, “Lafitau’s Hoes,” in American Antiquity, vol. 33, no. 1 (Jan. 1968). Sturtevant demonstrates that Lafitau’s plate of Huron agricultural practices, in the 1724 edition, borrows shamelessly from a De Bry plate of 1591, showing Timucua agricultural practices in the vicinity of St. Augustine, Florida. Here, then, is further evidence of both the longevity of the De Bry tradition and the tendency of one printmaker to borrow from another.