Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrator)
Blachrie Elizabeth Blackwell ( * 1700 in Aberdeen, † 1758 in London), born Elizabeth Blachrie, was an artist and engraver who created their illustrations of plants in A Curious Herbal ( 1737-1739 ) one of the most important works of illustration vorLinnéschen botany. Your official botanical author abbreviation is " BlackW. "
Life and work
Blackwell was the daughter of a well-off Scottish merchant and received in their youth lessons in drawing and painting. At 28, she married her cousin Alexander Blackwell and settled down with him in Aberdeen, where the husband opened a practice as a general practitioner. Having doubts about the validity of his license had arisen, the couple moved to London, where her husband tried in the printing industry and without the legally required training and membership in the printer Guild opened his own print shop. As then a heavy fine was imposed and the printing had to be closed, got the pair for which a child had been born now, in high debt, and Alexander Blackwell was taken as an insolvent debtor in debtor's prison.
To find a way out of economic hardship, Elizabeth Blackwell put some of her drawings to the British physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane ago, the board in place of Isaac edge of the Royal Society and on his estates in Chelsea, together with the London pharmacist Guild and Charles du Bois, the treasurer of the East India Company, a major botanic Gardens, the Chelsea Physic Garden, entertained. The drawing can Elizabeth Blackwell was the interest Sloane and his professional colleagues. With Sloane's support then the project of a botanical panel plant was developed, which should reflect the most important for physicians and pharmacists plants, including also the newly discovered plants of the Americas, in vivid pictures.
Elizabeth Blackwell moved its residence to Chelsea, where for the drawings from the living model of the plants in the Physic Garden from, made the stitches and then colored it. The English name of the plant are respectively the Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch counterparts, as well as brief information added, is recognized as a main source for Officinale Joseph Miller Botanicum (1722). Since Elizabeth Blackwell did not own any botanical training, botanical information to have been contributed by her husband from prison, actually but they were far better to get in Chelsea, where Elizabeth Blackwell, among other things, with the support of Isaac Rand, the curator of the Physic Garden, could work.
1737-1739 appeared the work of Samuel Harding in London in two folio volumes, under the title A Curious Herbal Containing Five Hundred Cuts, of the most useful Plants Which are now used in the Practice of Physick. Elizabeth Blackwell did it appear under her own name and introduced him to the scientific credentials, a letter signed by several renowned doctors and scientists approval letter above.
The work was due to the high quality of the drawings and the inclusion of foreign and exotic plants a great success if it could not also meet the requirements of the reception are at this time in the professional world systematics Carl Linnaeus. From 1747/49, therefore, the Nuremberg doctor and pharmacist Christoph Jacob Trew, a revised and in the texts considerably enlarged German version brought in Nuremberg by Johann Joseph Fleischmann out under the title Herbarium Blackwellianum emendatum et auctum for which he revised himself the botanical apparatus and the draftsman and engraver Friedrich Nikolaus Eisenberger (1707-1771) was characterized and stab all new illustrations. This edition, in the Trew from the second band for the botanical apparatus also the Leipzig professor Christian Gottlieb Ludwig, and later on more staff hinzuzog, grew to five volumes and was in 1773 with a sixth Supplement to the Blackwell missing or misrepresented plants are completed.
The work of Elizabeth Blackwell was a tall, also economic success, from whose revenue could trigger her husband from debtors' prison. This debt, however, soon again, and then went in 1742 alone to Sweden, where he continued to receive from his wife support from their book revenue, and as a physician at the royal court at times had some success in 1748 but was executed for involvement in a political conspiracy.
Little is known about Elizabeth Blackwell's own fate. She died in 1758 and was buried in the cemetery of Chelsea.