Description:
Imperial Sun Trochus
Hand coloured copper plate engraving
From:
The Naturalist’s Repository by Edward Donovan, 1823.
Artist:
Edward Donovan.
Addional Notes:
Edward Donovan (1768-1837) was a wealthy prominent naturalist who had an entree to all the great collections of the time. He drew the subjects for his illustrations
from his own museum and the collections of such famous scientists as Sir Joseph Banks and Drury. Banks
collected a number of specimens of the famous New Zealand rarity, the Imperial Sun Shell, while with Captain
James Cook in New Zealand. ...the — pink variety — which was brought up on the anchor cable of either the
Adventure or Discovery and bought by a Sir Ashton Lever from Cook or Cook’s widow. The shell was sold
in 1806 to J.J.A. Filliham for 23 guineas and from him it went to the Duke of Bourbon who was then living in England. It was sold again on the latter’s return to France and later reached the British Museum where it remains today. During its time in the Leverian Museum
it was painted by Alexandre Chevalier de Barde, a noted French natural history painter and was illustrated yet again by Donovan in The Naturalist’s Repository or Miscellany of Exotic Natural History Exhibiting Rare
and Beautiful Specimens of Foreign Birds, Insects, Shells published in 1823 in London. It comprised five volumes
with 180 hand coloured engravings.
Reference: The Southern Ark, Zoological Discovery In NZ, J.R.H. Andrews, 1986 .
Display &
Framing Notes:
Do not hang in direct sunlight.
This print should be framed with acid free archival matting and archival glass.
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