* Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues Dieppe circa 1533 - 1588 London

This remarkable group of twenty-seven drawings, executed in watercolor and gouache by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (circa 1533-1588), represent an extremely significant addition to our knowledge of this fascinating Huguenot artist, the details of whose extraordinary career and adventurous life only gradually came to light during the course of the 20th Century.

Le Moyne was born in around 1533, in Dieppe, which was at the time a great centre of cartography and illumination. Nothing is known of his training and earlier career, until early 1564, when he seems to have been instructed by the French King Charles IX to travel as cartographer and official recording artist on an astonishing and ill-fated expedition to establish a Huguenot settlement in Florida, led by the notable mariners Jean Ribault and René Goulaine de Laudonnière.  After his return to France in early 1566, Le Moyne wrote a remarkable, illustrated description of the voyage and account of the various disasters that befell the party, most of whom perished, some at the hands of the local Indian tribes or the Spanish, and others as a result of mutiny and rebellion within their own ranks.  Only fifteen returned alive.  This account was published in Frankfurt by Theodor de Bry in 1591, under the title Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae provincia Gallis acciderunt; it contains 42 engraved maps and illustrations of the inhabitants of Florida and their customs, and is an extremely important early source of information on these subjects.  In 1572, Le Moyne fled to England to avoid the Huguenot massacres, and remained there until his death in 1588.  Soon after his arrival in England, he came to the attention of Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom he was probably introduced by his fellow artist John White, who shared similar interests in exploration, and Raleigh remained one of the artist’s most important patrons for the rest of his career.  In this cultural milieu, where the interest of ethnographer and the curiosity of explorer were entwined with the refined aesthetic sensibility of the Elizabethan period, Le Moyne produced some of his most fascinating works, including the exquisite gouache of the so-called Young Daughter of the Picts (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).

Prior to the identification of any original drawings by the artist, Le Moyne was only known to a very specialised audience as the writer and the illustrator of the account of Laudonnière’s Florida expedition, and also as the author of an extremely rare book of woodcuts of plants, animals and birds, published at Blackfriars in 1586, under the title La Clef des Champs.  In 1900, however, an original gouache on parchment by Le Moyne, relating to the Florida expedition, was discovered; representing The Indian Chief Athore showing Laudonnière the Marker Column set up by Ribault, this drawing is now in the collection of the New York Public Library (see Paul Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues , Oxford 1977, vol. i, cat. no.34, illustrated vol.ii, pl. 6).  The rediscovery of the talent of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues as a botanical artist is also relatively recent.  In 1922 Spencer Savage, librarian of the Linnean Society, recognized that a group of fifty-nine watercolors of plants on thirty-three sheets, originally contained in a small volume with a late 16th-century French brown calf binding and purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1856, were in fact the work of this previously little-known artist (see Spencer Savage, 'The discovery of some of Jacques Le Moyne' s botanical drawings', The Gardeners' Chronicle, 3rd series, vol. lxxi, London 1922, p. 44, and idem, 'Early botanical painters, no.3, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues', ibid., vol. lxiii, 1923, pp.148-49).

These publications by Savage paved the way for further attributions to the artist, notably the album of fifty botanical watercolors acquired by the British Museum at Sotheby’s on 11 December 1961 (lot 177; see Hulton, op.cit., cat. nos. 36-86, illustrated pls. 35-48).  The botanical drawings in that album were preceded by a sheet with a manuscript sonnet dated 1585 (in a hand that has been identified as that of the Huguenot writing-master John de Beauchesne).  Other than these two groups of drawings in the Victoria and Albert and British Museums, the only significant original works by Le Moyne that were known until now were the eight miniatures on vellum in the The Garden Library, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., and the six magnificent miniature-like gouaches, formerly in the collection of the late Eric Korner (sold, New York, Sotheby’s, 29 January 1997, lots 55-60).

Exquisitely executed in watercolor and gouache over traces of black chalk, the twenty-seven drawings in the present group were formerly contained in an album with a 19th-century French binding.  Almost all are, however, drawn on a French paper that can be dated around 1540, on the basis of the watermarks found in a few sheets, and the technique of manufacture of the distinctive, thin paper, with its fine but rather irregular chain and laid lines.  All twenty-seven sheets are laid down onto a 17th-century French paper, probably from Lorraine, and these backing sheets are numbered in a relatively early hand, suggesting that the drawings were perhaps assembled into an album in the 17th century.  The sequence of this numbering is not, however, continuous, so the original sequence of the drawings was probably lost long before they were rebound in the 19th century. Many of the sheets also bear inscriptions, mostly in two later, probably German, hands, identifying the species depicted.  The evidence of the original papers nonetheless indicates that these drawings must date from fairly early in Le Moyne’s career, prior to his move from France to England in 1572.

The drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum are also thought to be early works, dating from around 1568: several of the sheets contain a French watermark of about that date (very similar to Briquet 12826).  In terms of style, a dating for the present works close to that of the Victoria and Albert drawings also seems plausible, as the two groups show striking similarities of spirit and composition, and the use of color and definition of detail are also very comparable.  The touches of color on the stamens of flowers, the depiction of the little hairs on the poppy stems, the shadows built up with blocks of gray wash, all are portrayed in exactly the same ways, with an extremely subtle combination of meticulous, almost miniaturist technique and a great freedom and transparency of subtly nuanced watercolor.  In the British Museum drawings, although the range of colors used is still strikingly similar, as are many of the techniques the artist employed to represent the minute details of the plants, the handling is generally a little more repetitive and formulaic, suggesting that Le Moyne was by then approaching his subjects with slightly less spontaneity and freshness of vision.  Indeed, the spontaneity and relative informality of the present drawings constitute one of their defining qualities: although the species of flowers depicted - all common wild varieties - are very similar to those found in the artist’s other works, the conception and mise-en-page is here rather less formal than in the Victoria and Albert and British Museum drawings, illustrating a slightly different, seemingly more personal aspect of Le Moyne’s style.  It is also noteworthy that the present group contains several magnificent watercolours of birds, an aspect of the artist’s work previously only known from prints rather than drawings.

Although the technique of the drawings in this group is for the most part extremely consistent, and their quality uniformly exceptional, three of the drawings, depicting walnut, melon, and cucumber (lots 51, 53, 54), are drawn on a different, slightly heavier paper than the rest, and together with the study of grapes (lot 52) are executed in a somewhat broader, more painterly style.  A certain disparity of technique can also be observed amongst the other known works by Le Moyne, and the above-mentioned drawings in the present group certainly fall within the range of stylistic variation of the group in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which contains several very comparable, rather broadly executed works (see Hulton, op.cit., cat. nos. 23, 26r, 26v and 28, illustrated pls. 29a, 30b, 30c and 31a).  This stylistic variation has, however, led some scholars to suggest that there may in fact be more than one hand represented within the groups of drawings that have been published under Le Moyne’s name, and for that reason we have chosen to describe as "Attributed to Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues" the five drawings in the present group (lots 51-55) which appear to be slightly different in style to the others.

Given Le Moyne’s extraordinary talent as an artist, and the great interest that there was during his lifetime for botanical illustration, it seems likely that the majority of his botanical drawings must be lost.  Almost all of his previously known works are in British and American museum collections, and this remarkable group of twenty-seven drawings is the first significant addition to the oeuvre of this exceptional artist since the appearance of the volume of fifty watercolors acquired by the British Museum in 1961.  Though relating closely to his other known works, these drawings add an important new dimension to our knowledge of the style and development of this fascinating artistic personality.

In the preparation of this introduction and the following notes on the individual drawings, we gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of Peter Bower, who identified the watermarks and papers in the present sheets and compared them with the two groups of botanical studies by the artist in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, and of Sam Segal, who helped with the identification of the species depicted.