The adventurous life story of the flower painter Elizabeth Blackwell began at the beginning of the 17th century in Aberdeen, Scotland, where she was born the daughter of a successful merchant. In her youth, she received painting and drawing lessons. Her marriage to her cousin Alexander Blackwell was to prove fateful. After he opened a medical practice, doubts arose about his professional credentials, whereupon the couple went to London. There he set up a printing business, although he had neither the legally required training nor a license to do so. As a result, a heavy fine was imposed on him and the print shop was closed. Since the couple was unable to pay the fine and in the meantime they also had to provide for a child they had together, they fell deeper and deeper into debt until he finally ended up in a debtors' prison.
To pay off her husband, Elizabeth Blackwell decided to settle the financial debts with drawings of plants. She submitted some of her works to the then president of the Royal Society, the physician and botanist Sir Hans Sloane. Her lifelike depictions convinced Sloane, and he decided to promote Blackwell. She created exact representations of the 500 most important medicinal plants for a botanical book that was to become a standard work for pharmacists and physicians. To do this, she made drawings at the Chelsea Botanical Garden, took over the work of an engraver, and colored the engravings herself. The scientific descriptions of the plants were provided by the botanists at the facility, which still exists today as the Apothecaries' Physic Garden in Chelsea. After a few years, the work was published in London under the title "A Curious Herbal" in two volumes. Due to the high quality of the drawings, the inclusion of newly discovered plants from North and South America, and complete descriptions of the morphology, location, flowering time, and medicinal properties of the plants, the book became a great success, also in financial terms. Elizabeth Blackwell was thus able to release her husband from debtors' prison. However, this was not to change the family's fortunes for the better in the long term. Alexander Blackwell went after his release to Sweden, where he was executed a few years later for involvement in a political plot.
In the mid-18th century, the Nuremberg physician and botanist Christoph Jacob Trew became aware of Elizabeth Blackwell's work. Trew revised it in the sense of Carl von Linné's systematics and also had the illustrations redrawn and engraved, respectively he also had additional plants included. The result was a highly sophisticated work corresponding to the botanical, scientific knowledge of the time, which was published in six volumes under the title "Herbarium Blackwellianum". Blackwell was not able to profit from this success for long. She died in 1758.
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-144950).jpg "Balm, plate 27 from")
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.jpg "Acanthus, 1737 by Elizabeth Blackwell")
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.jpg "Acanthus Branca Ursina, from A Curious Herbal, published in Nuremburg in 1757 by Elizabeth Blackwell")
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.jpg "Green tea by Elizabeth Blackwell")
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.jpg "Punica Granatum, from A Curious Herbal, 1782 by Elizabeth Blackwell")
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