Nature's Explorers: Adventurers who recorded the wonder of the natural world

(Hardback)

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Description

Natures Explorers celebrates the individuals who made great personal endeavours to document the natural world. Superb artworks and photographs spanning three centuries have been chosen to illustrate each essay.

From ground-breaking theorists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to evocative artists like Ferdinand Bauer and John James Audubon, these explorers shared an ambition to illuminate new worlds and each embodied the spirit of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.

It was not until the early eighteenth century that artists were included on such expeditions, they were called upon to illustrate the new flora and fauna they discovered and in doing so were also able to provide new insights from social, cultural and historical perspectives.

Reviews

A luxury coffee-table book, flick through it and wonder at the sumptuous colour paintings of plants, animals, landscapes and people. BBC Wildlife Magazine Ten years ago I had the pleasure of spending a little time in the library at the Natural History Museum, London. One could have spent all day perusing the collection of historic natural history texts. Fortunately, the museums publishing division regularly puts out books that showcase whats in their collection and beyond Nature Explorers, consists of chapters on 23 explorers and naturalists with full colour images of natural history illustrations, portraits, maps, or other drawings. Theres plenty to explore in the folks whose work constituted what we might now look back on and recognise as a first broad survey of our planet, its life and its people - The Dispersal of Darwin

Author Bio

The contributors all either work for the Museum or are closely associated with it and their choice of subjects reflects their own areas of expertise. They include Andrea Hart, Ann Datta, Blanca Huertas, Cam Sharp Jones, David Williams, Douglas Russell, Grace Touzel, Hans Walter Lack, Hellen Pethers, Judith Magee, Lisa de Tomaso, Mary Spencer Jones, Mark Carine, Max Barclay, Nicholas Hind, Paul Cooper, Simon Werrett, Sandra Knapp, Victoria Pickering and Virginia Mills.