Capture the First Signs of Spring with Nature Drawings

This post is by Jessica Fries-Gaither, a 2024-2025 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the Library of Congress.

March is one of my favorite months because it marks the start of spring. Warmer temperatures, trees budding, plants emerging from the soil, and flowers blooming all make me want to get outside and soak in the beauty. I also love that we can use art to document our observations of the changing seasons. In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to share three women who deserve more widespread recognition for their illustrations of nature. After you learn about them, you can create your own nature drawings to celebrate the beginning of spring!

Maria Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was an artist and amateur naturalist in Germany and the Netherlands during the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries. Curious about the life cycle of butterflies and moths, she raised many kinds of caterpillars in her kitchen. As she cared for the caterpillars and watched the butterflies and moths emerge, she sketched, painted, and took detailed notes about what she observed. She used this documentation to create copperplate engravings. Each one showed the entire life cycle of a single species along with the host plant it depended on for survival. Merian used the copperplates to print copies of her illustrations, hand-painted some, and sold each complete set as a book. Her work was groundbreaking in scientific circles across Europe.

Look closely at two images from that book. What kinds of details do you notice? Why do you think it was important for her to include so much detail?

A red moth stands on two blue flowers on a stalk of nine blue flowers. Also on a flower is a small black and white furry caterpillar. Around the image of the flower are small, white insect eggs, a moth larvae, moth pupa, larger drawing of the furry white and black moth, and two winged black and yellow bugs. — One Maria Merian’s illustrations from the 1730 volume of her work, De Europischen insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt. (Page 19, Rare Book Selections, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

A yellow flower with green, spikey leaves sits in the ground. on the ground are small stones and a moth pupa. On the branches o the plant are a large brown moth and a furry brown caterpillar with yellow and white tufts coming off of it. — One of Maria Merian’s illustrations from the 1730 volume of her work, De Europischen insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt. (Page 23, Rare Book Selections, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

Later in her life, Merian marveled at the unusual animal and plant specimens being brought to the Netherlands from the Americas. She raised money for her and her eldest daughter, Dorothea Maria, to travel to Surinam, a Dutch sugar colony on the northern coast of South America. For two years, she observed, described, and painted insects and plants found on treks into the jungle and brought to her by the indigenous people. When illness forced her to cut her time in Surinam short, she shipped many specimens back to Amsterdam and continued her work there. As before, she used to paintings to create copperplate engravings and compiled the prints into a book of Surinamese insects. What do you notice when you look at two paintings from this book? How do they compare to the images from her first book?

In the center of the image is a plant stalk with yellow flowers featuring red centers. On the leaves of the plant are several caterpillars, two which are yellow with black dots and two that are lighter yellow with black stripes. On the bottom right of the plant is a tan and black moth with it's wings spread out. on the top of the page is a yellow and gray moth with its wings spread out. — One of Maria Merian’s illustrations from her 1705 book, Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium. (Page 42, Rare Book Selections, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

In the center of the image is a large plant stalk with jagged, spikey leaves that are green with white spines. On the end of the plant stalk is a yellow flower. On other leaves are several bugs including a brown beetle, a black beetle, a white pupa, a dark yellow caterpillar and a winged bug with a black body and red dots down its back and above its outstretched wings. — One of Maria Merian’s illustrations from her 1705 book, Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium. (Page 81, Rare Book Selections, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.)

Genevieve Jones

As a child, Genevieve Estelle Jones (1847-1879) often accompanied her physician father as he visited patients in the Circleville, Ohio, area. On one of these buggy rides, Gennie discovered a birds’ nest that she did not recognize. Her brother and father were not able to identify the type of bird that had built it, so young Gennie searched her father’s library only to find that there were no books on the nests and eggs of American birds.

While Gennie identified the need for such a book at an early age, she did not actually begin work on it until the age of 30. She was inspired after viewing an exhibition of Audubon’s “The Birds of America “at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia and realizing that his work included nests as decoration, rather than as scientific information. Gennie and her friend Eliza Shulze began sketching nests and eggs. These sketches were copied onto sixty-five pound lithographic stones and shipped eighty-nine miles to Cincinnati, where the Aldoph Krebs Lithographic Company took on the work of creating the engravings and producing prints from each stone plate. Gennie completed five images before contracting typhoid fever and dying at the age of 32; her mother, father, and brother dedicated much of the rest of their lives to completing the book, “Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio,” in her honor.

Compare Gennie’s drawings of an Indigo Bird’s nest and eggs (left) and a Summer Warbler (right) from the Library’s copy of “Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio.” What similarities and differences do you notice between these two nests? What about the eggs?

A drawing in black and white of a large bird's nest siting in a thin tree branch cluster. Leaves are on the branches and the nest is deep, made of twigs and feathers. Three eggs are also drawn on the page below the nest. — A picture from Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio. Howard Jones 1886. (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Photograph by Jessica Fries-Gaither)

A black and white image of a rounded birds nest sitting on a tree branch. The branches of the trees have leaves on them. In a line next to the branch are three draw eggs with spots on the shells. — A picture from Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio. Howard Jones 1886. (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Photograph by Jessica Fries-Gaither)

Like many other natural history books of the time, both black-and-white and color versions were sold. Hand-painting each print took time, and so color versions were much more expensive than black-and-white ones. Compare the Library’s black-and-white image of a Wood Thrush’s nest and eggs with the color version in a volume owned by the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. What different information can you get from a color image versus a black-and-white one?

A black and white drawn image of a birds next on a branch. Inside the nest are four small eggs. The nest consists of twigs and leaves. — A black-and-white (Library of Congress, photograph by Jessica Fries-Gaither) of a Wood Thrush nest and eggs. Howard Jones 1886. Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio.

A color drawn image of a birds next on a branch. Inside the nest are four small, blue eggs. The nest consists of brown twigs and green leaves — A color (Smithsonian Libraries) version of a Wood Thrush nest and eggs. Howard Jones 1886. Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio.

Beatrix Potter

Before Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) wrote and illustrated her children’s books about Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Puddle-Duck and others, she used her artistic talents to observe and document different species of fungi across England. At the time, her work was not recognized due to her being a woman. Her watercolor paintings of fungi, however, were featured years later in W. P. K. Findlay’s 1967 field guide, “Wayside and Woodland Fungi.” As Findlay shares in his Preface,

For over fifty years the books in the “Wayside and Woodland“ series have helped field naturalists to recognize the plants and animals of our countryside, but the series have never yet included a volume on fungi…I was finally moved to write such a book myself on seeing the splendid but hitherto mostly unpublished paintings of fungi in their natural surroundings by Beatrix Potter (p xi).

Examine the two species of fungi shown on this plate (left) and compare them to the written descriptions found in the same book (right). Which would be more helpful if you were trying to identify a mushroom? Why?

This picture has drawn images of mushrooms. On top of the page are two long white and tan mushrooms laying in a bed of straw with four smaller mushrooms sitting next to them. At the bottom of the image are three tall, dark brown mushrooms standing in amongst grass. — Plate 13. Findlay, W. P. K. 1967. Wayside and Woodland Fungi. (Library of Congress, Photography by Jessica Fries-Gaither)

This image contains text from a book highlighting the Conical Wax Cap mushroom. — Accompanying text for Plate 13. Findlay, W. P. K. 1967. Wayside and Woodland Fungi. (Library of Congress, Photography by Jessica Fries-Gaither)

While all three women observed and documented nature, they used different methods of obtaining and observing their specimens. Maria Merian primarily worked with live specimens, including those that she reared in her home and those collected from the jungles of Surinam. Genevieve Jones used nests and eggs gathered by her brother Howard and added to her father’s natural history cabinet. Beatrix Potter collected fungi specimens from the countryside and visited London’s Natural History Museum to study their collections during the winter months. Yet despite these differences, all three produced beautiful and scientifically important work.

I hope seeing the work of these talented women has inspired you to document your own observations. What signs of spring might you focus on? What materials might you use? Whether you take a sketchbook to your garden or use watercolors to paint the cherry blossoms, know that you are part of a long tradition of using art to study nature!

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