Attributed to Venceslao Verlin
1740 – 1780
A Naturalist in his Study engraving a Butterfly
Exhibitions:
Essay:
Wenceslaus Wehrlin, called Venceslao Verlin, was born in Florence and was the son of Giovanni Adamo Wehrlin. At an early age he developed a keen sense of draughtsmanship and soon specialised in family group portraits and genre scenes.
His pictures are usually lightly coloured and well drawn. He soon gained the attention of the Courts and received many commissions from the nobility of both Florence and Turin.
-
In this fascinating study of an engraver at work the sitter has laid down his burin to present a copper engraver's plate. He appears to have been interrupted as he is about to wipe ink from the plate with the cloth in his other hand. The man is clearly also a natural historian and appears to be working from the likeness of a yellow European swallowtail butterfly which is pinned to a jar lid before him. Other specimens on his desk include a hawk moth caterpillar, a tropical rhinoceros beetle, a fan coral, and a large tropical seashell. A folio of sepia sketches litters the table in front of him along with several weighty books.
The naturalist appears elegantly dressed in a banyan gown with lace cuffs, a turban, and wears a small ring, indicating that he is not a jobbing engraver, but rather a man of some class and wealth. He sits in a brightly lit room with a curving stone wall giving a hint of the classical. The clothing and pastel colour palette is typical of Verlin's portraits of collectores. See for instance 'An Italian Collector in his Study' (National Trust, Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, NT 207799)
One possibility as to the man's identity is the naturalist and engraver Gerrit Wartenaar (1747 - 1803). Wartenaar was from the Netherlands and worked with the wealthy merchant and entomologist Pieter Cramer (1721 - 1776) in Cramer's publishing projects including the four volume De uitlandsche Kapellen on exotic butterflies. These books were lavishly illustrated with life-sized hand-coloured engravings and could perhaps be alluded to by the books on the sitter's desk. Cramer and Wartenaar did not restrict their work to butterflies and were interested in other areas of natural history including fossils, shells, and other insects.
Provenance:
Private Collection, Belgium,
Jean-Jacques Petit, Paris.
