Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17985

    Geranium specimen

    Date
    ca.1725
    Creator
    Jacob van Huysum (1682 - 1745, Dutch) , Painter
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > plant
          > flower
    Description
    Botanical study of a specimen of geranium, Pelargonium odoratissimum, referred to here as Geranium africanum, native to South Africa. Shown with large green leaves, and small purple flowers open and in bud.

    Painting 37 from MS/109, a collection of botanical paintings by Jacob van Huysum and William Sartorius.

    Inscribed in ink 'Geranium Africanum arborescens malvae folio mucronato petalis florum inferioribus vix conspicuis act: Phil. n 388'. Not signed.

    A specimen of this plant was noted in 'A catalogue of the 50 Plants, from Chelsea Garden, presented to the Royal Society... 1724' by Isaac Rand, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society volume 33, issue 388 (1724). It was cultivated at Chelsea Physic Garden in London, and was one of the specimens from the yearly collection sent by the Society of Apothecaries to the Royal Society.

    Jacob van Huysum (1682-1745), Dutch botanical painter, was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He produced most of the 50 illustrations for the Historia Plantarum Rariorum (London: 1728-38) written by John Martyn FRS, and all the drawings for Philip Miller’s Catalogus Plantarum, an index of trees, shrubs, plants and flowers.
    Associated place
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