Large Blue Iris c. 18th century

John Edwards made this watercolor of a Large Blue Iris sometime around the late 18th century. Botanical illustration was entering a kind of golden age. This interest in scientific accuracy intersected with other cultural trends. For example, the rise of amateur science among the gentry and middling sorts, especially women, opened up new social spaces for knowledge production. But it was also driven by the needs of global commerce and the establishment of botanical gardens in places like Calcutta and Jamaica. Naturalists were needed to document and classify plants that could be of medical or economic benefit to the colonizing power. We can see in the Iris’s delicate coloring and precise rendering, the aesthetic values of the period as well as the scientific ones. In understanding art, the historian uses a wide range of documents, from scientific treatises to personal letters. These tell us a good deal about how knowledge, art and social life intertwine.