Scientific artwork by Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates produced during their expedition to the Amazon between 1848-1852 is available online for the first time.
Amazonian fish by Wallace.
Pencil drawings and watercolour paintings by Wallace and Bates have been digitized by the Wallace Correspondence Project and released through its newly upgraded digital archive, Wallace Letters Online.
The collection features high-quality scans of around 200 of Wallace’s drawings of fish, as well as paintings of butterflies and other insects from two of Bates’s notebooks, which were produced during their exploration of the Amazon in the mid-1800s.
The scanned artworks join more than 23,000 images of documents, drawings and paintings now available in the Wallace Letters Online database.
Butterflies illustration by Bates.
Historically significant artworks
Dr George Beccaloni, Wallace Correspondence Project Director, explained the historical importance of Wallace and Bates’s drawings and paintings. ‘In the mid-nineteenth century, when Wallace and his companion Bates were collecting animal specimens in Amazonia, there were no small portable cameras.’
‘So if you wanted an image of something then someone would have to laboriously draw or paint it. Fortunately, both Wallace and Bates were excellent artists, unlike some of their colleagues, such as Charles Darwin.’
Along with the digitised artworks, the new version of Wallace Letters Online includes records of nearly 500 new items, as well as biographies of many of Wallace’s correspondents, whose letters are also included in the database.
Source: Natural History Museum
Read related articles in HCS-Manguinhos:
BROWNE, J.: Natural History collecting and the Biogeographical tradition. História, Ciências, Saúde, Manguinhos, vol. VIII (supplement), 959-67, 2001.
KNIGHT, D. M.: Travels and science in Brazil. História, Ciências, Saúde Manguinhos, vol. VIII (supplement), 809-22, 2001.
