From Nature and Memory: William Bartram’s Drawings of North American Flora and Fauna
Amy Meyers
On January 11th, 1793, the Philadelphia naturalist, William Bartram, sent his protégé, Benjamin Smith Barton, a letter acknowledging his receipt of “a very ingeniously preserved subject of the Black squirrell” of which he promised to “take a drawing” for Barton, “in the best maner I am able to perform.” Bartram also included with this letter three drawings of animals from across the eastern seaboard of North
America that he had already completed: a snakebird, a weasel, and a tortoise. The drawing of the snake bird—perhaps a work executed by Bartram during one of several expeditions to Florida, in the 1760s and 1770s—is now unlocated, as is the drawing of the squirrel which Bartram presented to Barton several months after receiving the specimen and which Barton then sent on loan to the English naturalist, Thomas Pennant.
However, the drawings of the weasel and the tortoise were preserved among Barton’s effects, along with many other works that Bartram gave the young naturalist or produced for his numerous publication projects, beginning in the 1780s and continuing through the first year or so of the nineteenth century, when Bartram’s eyesight began to fail. [Figs. 1 and 2]
1 Fig. 1. William Bartram, Weasel, n.d., pen and ink sketch. Benjamin Smith Barton Papers, Violetta Delafield-Benjamin Smith Barton Collection, 1789- 1815. B B284
Fig. 2. William Bartram, Testudo caelata n.d., pen and ink drawing. Benjamin Smith Barton Papers, Violetta Delafield-Benjamin Smith Barton Collection, 1789-1815. B B284
Bartram’s gift of his drawings to his young colleague reflected a change in the
older naturalist’s status that had been evolving for more than a decade, from that of an
active field naturalist, exploring, collecting, drawing, and writing to promote his own reputation and interests, both in colonial North America and in Britain, to that of pater familias, supporting the work of the first generation of young naturalists to emerge in post-Revolutionary Philadelphia, the seat of science in the new nation. Bartram had assumed this role as mentor after having experienced a tremendous struggle to secure the
British patronage necessary to sustain him as a field naturalist in a colonial environment
2 that offered little possibility of support. He had emerged as a young prodigy in the trans-
Atlantic world of science in the early 1750s, under the initial tutelage of his father, John,
who, through his own extensive collecting trips across the eastern seaboard and the
development of an extraordinary botanic garden in Kingsessing, on the banks of the
Schuylkill River, just south of Philadelphia, had become the most important supplier of
North American seeds, live plants, and preserved specimens to British gardens and collections, from the 1730s until the Revolution. Creating drawings to accompany his father’s shipments in the 1750s and ‘60s, William was admired as the only British colonial naturalist in North America whose artistic talents could be compared to those of
the finest hands then practicing in Britain, George Dionysus Ehret and George Edwards.
However, the young Bartram’s desire to pursue a career as a naturalist-artist in his own right was thwarted by his practical, Quaker father, who, having supported his own scientific activities through his initial career as a prosperous farmer, feared that his son would not be able to maintain a successful livelihood through his drawing and collecting activities alone. From 1773 to 1776, William was able to pursue a major scientific expedition of his own, traveling approximately 2,400 miles through the southern colonies under the patronage of the London physician, John Fothergill; but by the time he returned to Philadelphia, all of his British patrons either were in their extreme dotage or were dead. Worn down from years of wrestling to maintain his career as a scientific explorer, collector, and artist, Bartram retired to a somewhat reclusive life of study in his father’s botanic garden, now run by his older brother, John, Jr.
From this point forward, Bartram focused his fieldwork locally, on the flora and fauna in and around the garden, and concentrated on synthesizing several manuscripts
3 and publications from his many years of more extended work in the field. He particularly
spent time editing an extended, illustrated version of the journals he had kept on his
southern expedition for publication, and in 1791, this magnum opus was finally brought
into print by the Philadelphia firm of James and Johnson, as his Travels through North &
South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, The Cherokee Country, the Extensive
Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws:
Containing An Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manner of the Indians, Embellished with Copper-Plates. Sadly, by 1793, as he was making his gift of drawings to Barton, Bartram was contending with mixed critical reception to his book. So much time had elapsed between his expedition and the appearance of his observations in print that many of his discoveries had already been published by other naturalists, depriving him of rightful credit for his findings. The book, which ultimately would become one of the classic early texts in the genre of romantic travel writing, venerated by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Emerson, and Thoreau, also met with caustic criticism in the popular press for the unfamiliar tone of its impassioned descriptions of the natural world, which were termed “rhapsodical effusions” and were derided for their “disgustingly pompous style.” Nonetheless, new editions had already appeared in London, Dublin, Berlin, and Vienna, with more to be issued across Europe over the course of the decade, and Bartram’s scientific colleagues at home and abroad recognized him as the field naturalist with the widest knowledge of the natural productions of North America.
In reflecting on the varied responses to his work, and the vicissitudes of his career, Bartram must have understood with extraordinary clarity the difficulties and
4 personal sacrifices involved in pursuing a life as a naturalist in a young society distant from the mainstream of European culture, where monetary support for the profession was more abundant; but he also understood the deep intellectual and spiritual satisfactions that lay in the challenge of tenaciously following this course, and, in this way, he served as an example for a new generation of Philadelphia naturalists who quickly came to venerate his life and work—naturalists such as Benjamin Smith Barton, who, in 1790, accepted the position of Professor of Natural History and Botany at the College of Pennsylvania, which Bartram, himself, had declined in 1782, and who, with Bartram’s help would publish the first American botanical textbook, The Elements of Botany, in 1803; the
Scottish émigré, Alexander Wilson, who, inspired by Bartram and with his assistance, would devote himself entirely to producing the American Ornithology, the first illustrated book on American birds to be published in the United States, between 1808 and 1814; several of the children of Charles Willson Peale, who worked collaboratively with their father to create the first major museum of natural history in the United States, opening officially in the hall of the American Philosophical Society in 1794; and Bartram’s own young relative, Thomas Say, a founding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences who would publish the first major book on American insect, American Entomology, between 1817 and 1828, and on American shells, American Conchology, between 1830 and 1834.
Apart from Bartram’s own nephews—the children of his brother, John, who worked alongside him in the garden—Benjamin Smith Barton was probably the first young naturalist to seek Bartram directly as a mentor. Upon his return to Philadelphia
5 after a period of medical training at the University of Edinburgh and travel through
Europe, in 1789, Bartron wrote to the elder naturalist, asking for his assistance:
I think, I have already told you, that all the time I can spare from the duties of my profession [at this point, his projected career as a physician, and as a professor at the College of Philadelphia] I intend to devote to the study of Natural History of the United States. As I am young, I may hope to live to accomplish it. I am sensible, however, that I stand in need of assistance. Your assistance will be of most essential importance to me. I mean not to flatter, but I am confident, that no man in America is so constantly employed in reflecting upon the beauties and the wonders of Creation, as you are. You cannot but collect much. What you do not mean to publish yourself, I shall be happy to receive, &, I trust you will ever find me [?] in acknowledging the sources of my information.
Far from taking offence at Barton’s request to publish materials that Bartram, himself, was collecting, the older naturalist seems to have been reinvigorated by this appeal for help. In March of 1791, he wrote humbly to Barton:
I beg leave to offer these Observations and Specimens to Your notice & investigation since I find you have an extraordinary Talent & relish for discoveries in every branch of Natural History, (particular with regard to this our Native Country) which I hope you will pursue through life. I am willing nay desirous of contributing all I know for its promotion; I foresee the Magnificent structure & would be instrumental for its advancement—Tools & instruments You know, are as necessary as materials in the hands of the Architect. And ‘tho I am comparatively like an old Saw, or Auger, or Ax, worn out, rusty, & cast away as useless, yet even these rejected instruments, after being new Steeled, & repared, may again be [prefered?] to some useful purpose or other. I shall in complyance with Your benevolent request, use the freedom of communicating my observations & discoveries with respect to the Nat. History of this country, in such small matters that may come within the scope of my mean Talents.
In encouraging his young colleague, Bartram enthusiastically projected his own vision of the structure of nature that lay before Barton to construct, and offered, self-deprecatingly, to help in any way he could by applying his own “mean Talents” to its “advancement.”
Yet, for all his encouragement and his willingness to support Barton’s project, Bartram, from his vantage point of venerable experience, undoubtedly understood that his young friend’s undertaking, as a human act, would, ultimately, fall short of any ambition to completeness—that the infinite nature of the task of discerning and describing the natural world, as the limitless work of God, would go beyond the reach of even the most
6 competent of human “architects.” Just as his own life-long attempt to describe the
natural world of North America had fallen short of such completeness, so he knew that
Barton’s would, as well. Indeed, Bartram had begun his own lengthy Travels with a
metaphorical description of the natural world as God’s own great architectural
structure—as “the glorious apartment of the boundless palace of the sovereign
Creator…furnished with an infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressibly beautiful
and pleasing…” This infinite creation, with its “scenes, ever changing,” was most surely beyond the observational and descriptive powers of even the most privileged, professionally secure, and well-mentored of naturalists, such as Barton. Nonetheless, for
Bartram, as ungraspable as the enormity of God’s creation might be, and as
“inexpressible” its beauty, the act of examining nature and deriving pleasure from it, in its endless magnitude, represented the very highest of endeavors–not to be discouraged because of the limited reach of the observer, but to be applauded as an attempt to take in as much as possible and communicate it to the community of science at home and abroad.
Though never comprehensive, the naturalist’s observations were always to be valued as acts of reverence for the Supreme Being and as contributions to human knowledge of
God’s work--both for pleasure and for practical ends.
As Bartram considered the possibilities and limitations implicit in the work of the naturalist in attempting to convey the empirical experience of natural productions and phenomena to others, he must have thought back on the complex constructions he himself had created in attempting to replicate in some way, for patrons and colleagues in both
Europe and America, his own detailed observations. From his earliest youthful communications to his father’s British colleagues, in the 1750s, through own his mature
7 years as an active field naturalist, he combined dried specimens with notes and often
drawings, drawings with carefully crafted annotations, and printed texts with strategically
placed engravings, all assembled to approximate the things he saw as closely as possible.
Plants and animals transposed to the humanly crafted environment of the garden created
another kind of approximation. Although, for Bartram, these composite creations
necessarily fell short of their communicative objective, they were always suggestive and stimulating in their own right. While to recreate God’s Creation was, for him, impossible—the tragic flaw of his endeavor, and of the project of natural history as a whole—what drove him on was the thought that the attempt was beautiful and worthy in its own limited, human way, bringing people together as they tried to learn the “nature” of one another’s worlds through the texts, objects, and images they shared, whether for material or spiritual ends, or for reasons of love and friendship. Indeed, the construction of human community through the attempt to convey one’s observations of the natural world was, for Bartram, the highest human achievement—a social construction that the naturalist “architect” crafted through his own made things in the process of trying to know God’s work.
The drawings Bartram sent Barton in January of 1793 speak to the older naturalist’s sense of the rich possibilities inherent in the production of objects in response to the natural world and of the sharing of these objects with others. We know little about why he sent drawings of the particular animals portrayed; but the fauna of North America had been a topic of correspondence between the two men for several years. The missing drawing of the snakebird was clearly sent as part of an extended discussion Bartram and
Barton had been conducting since 1789 concerning the distinctive nature of the species
8 Bartram had seen on his travels through Florida, and the drawing of the weasel and
tortoise probably figured in similar taxonomic conversations. In 1792, Barton completed
a manuscript entitled “Notes on the Animals of North America,” in consultation with
Bartram, and over the course of the decade, as the young naturalist prepared his
Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, published in 1799, he drew heavily
upon Bartram’s work. Indeed, as an ornithological treatise the Fragments is largely a
compilation of Bartram’s observations, drawn from his letters and culled from the
“Catalogue” of 215 birds of the eastern United States that Bartram published in his
Travels. The very title of this work implies that Barton learned his mentor’s lessons
well—that the very best the naturalist might do would be the presentation of “fragments”
drawn from the natural world.
On some level, the three zoological drawings Bartram sent Barton contributed to
the materials that the older naturalist was continually offering his young colleague in
order to instruct him about the broad project of natural history and the making of images
in its service. Although the drawing of the snakebird is lost from the exchange, the image
of the weasel and the tortoise speak eloquently together about the many possible ways in
which an animal might be interpreted in visual terms, and what these two particular
variants have to offer.
The drawing of the weasel is executed in grey, brown, and black ink, over
graphite, on a sheet of cream laid paper measuring 21 by 37.5 centimeters. Originally, the sheet may, in fact, have been larger, since the drawing, bordered by its lined ink frame, does not sit squarely within the sheet, and a small portion of the image has been cropped away along the bottom edge. No watermark is visible, although one may have
9 been impressed in the part of the paper that was discarded, and no date or signature appear on the image, although they, too, may have been cut away. The drawing of the tortoise is executed in black ink over graphite on a sheet of buff, laid paper bearing the countermark, JWHATMAN, and measuring 20.5 by 27 centimeters. The countermark appears upside down at the base of the sheet, and only the lower half of the letters are visible, indicating that this sheet was also cut down from a larger piece of paper. In this case, however, the image sits neatly on the sheet, and the edges of the paper measure equidistantly to the ink frame, from top to bottom and side to side. While the sheet on which the weasel is drawn was clearly cropped for some later purpose after Bartram drew the work, the sheet on which the tortoise is drawn must have been carefully cut by
Bartram, himself, to the scale he thought most appropriate for the image he was about to make. This drawing was never signed or dated, and the countermark offers little help in establishing the period when the work might have been drawn, since the Whatman firm used the mark from 1763 to 1794.
Kraig Adler suggests that Bartram may have drawn the tortoise sometime before
1792, and may even have published an account of the animal, replete with an engraving of the image, that is now lost. Adler bases this possibility on two letters to Bartram from the Lancaster County naturalist, Gotthilf Henry Ernest Muhlenberg, in which Muhlenberg uses Bartram’s name for the tortoise, Testudo caelata, as given on the drawing, and refers to the creature as “your tortoise.” However, precisely when Bartram executed this drawing—as well as that of the weasel—may not be possible to determine, and, indeed, for the purposes of our discussion, may not matter deeply. Bartram clearly produced the drawings at different times for different projects of his own or of his various British and
10 American patrons and friends. Those purposes fulfilled, he then brought the works
together in conversation with one another for Barton, hoping that they might be “of some
note amongst your more valuable collections.” It is this conversation that is now
important for us to follow.
Bartram’s drawing of the weasel portrays an intimate, narrative vignette, in which the animal pursues a bird across a broken piece of turf. The weasel rises on its hind- quarters to lunge toward its prey, with its neck arched, ears back and whiskers bristling.
Its front paws extend to catch the bird with sharp claws that are conspicuously drawn. In response, the bird runs forward with neck extended, raising its wings and its left leg to propel itself into flight. Both animals are shown suspended in mid-leap, and while the dramatic encounter remains unresolved, the characteristic way in which the creatures react to one another as predator and prey is clear. A conglomerate stone filled with fossilized scallop shells is depicted conspicuously in the foreground behind the bird, suggesting that the drawing’s own function is to illustrate a moment in the narrative of natural history—to freeze it and preserve it for all time.
The forms of both animals are delineated in great detail, ink strokes running in specific directions to define the textures of their fur and feathers and concentrating or diffusing to indicate the tonality of their markings. Only the foreground space where the encounter between the animals occurs is depicted, focusing the viewer on this interaction as the subject of the work. And yet, a privileged piece of that subject is the weasel, rising up out of the illusionistic setting of the scene to define its body with particular clarity against the empty sheet of paper that contrasts so vividly with the landscape setting and the elements that combine to create the drama within it. The weasel gains physical
11 presence and power over the scene by being placed in this position; but as a silhouetted
form it is also presented emphatically as a piece of virtuoso drawing on a sheet of paper—a humanly created image made of ink and lead on a page. Not quite an abstracted diagram, the image pulls back and forth between naturalistic illusion and human construction, the latter emphasized by the ink frame that runs around the image and defines it as a picture—a frame with double borders to the left and right that keep the scene from running to the edge of the sheet to imply that it might move into the real world, the viewer’s space beyond.
In this drawing, Bartram both suggests the nature of a characteristic encounter between two creatures, defining the disposition of the physical attributes of each as they confront one another, and he articulates the artificiality of the exercise through which he makes the suggestion. The moment of interaction portrayed, extracted from the continuum of life, is only a small element of what is there to know, stimulating the viewer to want an impossible amount more, frame by frame. At the same time, Bartram far from thwarts the doing of natural history through the experience of his work. If only a fragment of what can be known about the animals it describes, the drawing is an extraordinary thing of beauty in its own right, brought into the world by Bartram’s own hand. And it stimulates the hope, however vague, that cumulatively, bit by bit, such images might create a corpus of knowledge, if not complete, then at least gratifying from an aesthetic point of view.
The drawing of the tortoise that Bartram paired for Barton with this fragmentary image is literally about fragments—both the physical fragments of the creature brought together on the sheet and the fragmentary narrative of the creature’s life. Although, on
12 first glance, this drawing appears a relatively modest composition in comparison to the
drawing of the weasel, it is, in fact, an equally eloquent exploration of the possibilities
and limitations of knowing nature and of conveying one’s knowledge through a drawn
image. In this case, as we shall see, Bartram’s self-conscious exercise connects
knowledge of natural things to that of the humanly created, and interweaves the experience of nature and culture inextricably. Through this drawing, he feeds the
experience of one back on the other, speaking of what we can learn in terms of what we
know, while teaching us to see afresh the world we have already constructed.
In the simplest sense, the drawing depicts the empty shell of a tortoise and the
creature’s disembodied head. The image of the shell, seen from above, is oriented
horizontally on the sheet, with the opening from which the head of the animal once
protruded facing to the right. The portrayal implies that the full shell is intact, with the
carapace, or dorsal side, in full view, and the inner surface of the plastron, or ventral side,
projecting out beyond the anterior end. The deeply shadowed cavity once filled by the
tortoise’s body is clearly represented at this point, where the upper and lower sides of the
shell form a gap. The representation of the head, shown in profile, is placed below the
shell, to the left, facing in the opposite direction. The shell and head not only turn away
from one another, but also occupy different planes in space. Oriented at a 90-degree
angle from one another, the profiled head illusionistically breaks the picture plane while
the shell lies parallel to it. The living body of the tortoise is implied to extend from the
jaunty head, projecting into the viewer’s realm, and ready to walk off, beyond our grasp.
At the same time, the shell presents its own extraordinary illusion, but in different spatial
terms. Floating parallel to the sheet of paper, it shows itself as a magnificent, complex
13 object, desirable to hold, to feel, and examine by sight and touch; but, casting no shadow,
it remains an ungraspable specter—an illusory image floating unanchored before us.
What stabilizes these two parts of the tortoise, building them into the form of a
pyramid, is a small key, which balances itself against the head, below the shell, to the
right. This key nearly attaches to the firm, drawn outline, measured equidistantly from
each side of the paper, top to bottom, and side to side, suggesting that taken together the
drawn images and words construct a coherent unit on the sheet, defined in its entirety by
the title written below the baseline: Testudo calata. The whole comes to be read as a
diagram, a humanly constructed object defining the attributes of the subject, a tortoise to
which Bartram has ascribed a particular Latin scientific name, describing it somewhat ironically, perhaps, as a made thing in its own right--as “engraved” or “embossed.”
However, Bartram keeps the disjointed parts of the tortoise in tension with his own attempt to make them cohere, distinguishing the head and shell by different methods of portrayal. The living, elastic, flesh of the head is delineated by the stippled application of ink, with the soft, gathered portions of the neck denoted through the densest and darkest concentrations of dots, indicating areas in shadow. The horny skin is represented by tiny, curved lines, interspersed among the stipples that activate the surface in a staccato-like rhythm. At the top of the head, as the skin stretches smooth and taut over the cranium, the density of the stippling is reduced to designate the region in brightest highlight—the region containing the creature’s brain which directs its characteristic movements, expressions, and responses. Indeed, as light is shown to strike the extended head expressly from above, the image seems to connote the reaction of the tortoise to a particular set of stimuli, given at a specific moment. A fleeting expression is shown to
14 cross the animal’s countenance (at least as much of an expression as might be wrought
from such a bony face): the corner of the mouth creases into a slight smile and the eye
look up in curiosity at something that has caught its attention—perhaps the artist’s own
examining eye, or that of the viewer. The creature’s liveliness, so vividly portrayed,
conveys the sense that if we were to come too close, the head would quickly retract in
fear into the folds of the neck. This implied response extending narratively beyond the moment depicted by the image reinforces the notion of the tortoise as a creature living through time—as a being whose physical structure allows for a complex variety of characteristic behaviors, both reactive and willful, in response to a multitude of stimuli
affecting it from minute to minute, and day to day. While the drawing can only show a single, dynamic moment in the life of the tortoise, this small image of one part of the creature suggests a full range of expressive possibilities that go well beyond the static image itself. Similar to our experience of the drawing of the weasel, we can only know this range by implication. We are left enticed and wishing for more.
The hard plates of the shell, a bony exoskeleton that remains as a vestige of the living creature that it once protected, are depicted in an entirely different way. Clearly outlined in black ink, their complex contours are built up from spidery, agitated lines that run roughly parallel to one another in clusters, concentrating, and sometimes cross- hatched, to form areas of depth and shadow, and thinning to form highlighted, protuberant ribs and flat, open planes. The plates take two distinct forms: small, approximate rectangles that overlap in two lines, descending from the anterior end down the left and right sides to create a continuous border around the central portion of the shell, and larger, scallop shells, overlapping in three rows to form this central portion.
15 The scallops in the two side rows appear to gyrate around one another, imparting motion to the surface of the tortoise shell. They are steadied by the middle row, which seems strung together by a cord fastened to each section by a small bow. The cord ends at the point of the last scallop, which terminates in a small heart.
In order to convey the shell’s form and texture, Bartram has drawn it as an assemblage of other commonly recognizable things, both natural and humanly made.
This associative device is repeated in a long text on the verso of the sheet, a verbal complement to the drawn image that extends the pictorial strategies at play. [Fig. 3]
Fig. 3. Description of Testudo caelata on verso of drawing, Figure 2. Pen and ink. Benjamin Smith Barton Papers, Violetta Delafield-Benjamin Smith Barton Collection, 1789-1815, B B284.
16
Bartram gives the viewer associative prompts to augment the understanding of the
tortoise that has been gained by examining the drawing. After making sure that the
viewer has learned from the image that the tortoise is “beautiful,” and establishing that it
is both a native of Pennsylvania and rare, he makes his first analogy between the tortoise
and another form in nature. He draws a comparison between the physical appearance of
Testudo caelata and a more common type of tortoise he calls the “Bay or Salt water
Turripin”—a species he tells us is caught in the region of the Delaware Bay and brought
to the Philadelphia Market to be purchased as a delicacy. Bartram cues his local
colleagues to a comparative type with which he knows they may be familiar or which
might easily be secured. Indeed, even someone looking at the image at a greater distance,
such as a patron in Britain or on the Continent, might be able to draw on a live or
preserved specimen of this more common species from a menagerie or cabinet collection as a point of reference for understanding Testudo caelata.
Bartram’s next rhetorical device establishes associative forms from the world of humanly crafted objects to help build a fully developed picture of the tortoise. Here he uses direct metaphor, describing the vertebrae of the spine as a keel. In examining the drawing, we deduced that the vertebrae might resemble a cord or string; but here the reference is transposed, and the spine becomes part of a boat. We are assured that our reading of the articulation of the joints between each plate has been correct—Bartram
describes them as “the representation of a ribband tied in a bowknot,” adding that they
“are uniformly carved in a curious and beautiful manner like alterelief, or embossed,
better expressed in the drawing than to be described by words, yet in reality absolutely
17 inimitable by the most ingenious sculptor, or artist.” These bows then are, themselves,
“representations” that have been actively created on the back of the tortoise by a higher
power in a manner resembling techniques used by human artists. We cannot be sure of exactly what he meant by “alterelief,” but perhaps he was referring to sculptural relief of the type depicted on the rose container by William Williams, in his 1766 portrait of
David Hall’s daughter, Deborah, in what was probably an elaborated version of their
Philadelphia garden. Alternatively, he may have had in mind the ornamental plasterwork
and carved wooden reliefs that decorated the interiors of so many houses of the
Philadelphia elite with whom the Bartram’s fraternized, or even the carved stone window
frames designed by his own father for the garden façade of their house. [Fig.4]
Fig. 4. Windows of John Bartram’s House, built c. 1730. Bartram’s Garden, Kingsessing, Pennsylvania.
18 And by “embossed,” he may have been referring to the impressed and tooled leather surfaces employed in decorative arts, from book bindings to standing screens and wall coverings both in North America and England, or to the relief created by silversmiths in decorating their pieces, both literally by embossing and as repoussé, such as is evidenced on the surface of the suggestively turtle-like teakettle-on-stand produced by the Philadelphia silversmith, Joseph Richardson, sometime between 1745 and 1755.
[Fig. 5]
Fig. 5 Joseph Richardson, Teakettle on stand, 1745-55. Silver, H : 14-3/4 in., Yale University Art Gallery, The Mabel Brady Garvan Collection (1932.93).
In fact, Bartram gives no explicit examples of “alterelief” or “embossed” himself, clearly assuming that his audience would have its own ample memories of decorative and artistic sources from which to conjure an understanding of the tortoise’s shell by association. Finally, he directs the reader back to his own drawing, insisting that his image gives a better idea of the carved shell of Testudo calaeta than might any words.
19 He concedes, however, that the animal’s shell itself is, in the end, the greatest work of art,
unable to be replicated effectively by an artist of any kind. As always, Bartram humbly defers to nature, claiming the inability of the human craftsman to represent the works of
God.
Bartram’s reliance on memory and association in reaching an understanding of a natural form is particularly pertinent in relation to his drawing of Testudo caelata because
he, in fact, drew directly on memory in making his portrayal of the creature. In the letter
accompanying his gift of the drawing to Barton, Bartram noted, “…with regard to the
drawing of the shell of the Tortoise there is a small mistake in the marks on the plates
which thee may easily correct when the get a shell but its not very material: I had take the
out lines in black lead but before I had time to finish the Animal made his escape, & was
obliged to finish it by memory.” Bartram’s own drawing, begun as he observed the
tortoise directly in its natural habitat along the Schuylkill—probably at the river’s edge in
his own garden—was, in fact, constructed largely from memory when the creature
walked off. Starting with a lead outline of the shell, he had probably intended to make a
dorsal view of the entire animal, resembling, perhaps, an image such as that of the “Soft
Shell’d Tortoise,” which he found in the Savannah River on his expedition through the
southern colonies in the 1770s. However, when the tortoise ambled off, he changed his
compositional strategy, completing the shell as an object in its own right and adding the
head as an essential, defining attribute of the species.
Bartram had, in fact, developed a full repertoire of approaches to the portrayal of
North American tortoises over the course of his lifetime, and in some way he must have consulted his memory of these in determining how to draw his subject, both as he initially
20 encountered it and after it walked away. He had begun the project of depicting tortoises
in 1755, at the age of sixteen, for his father’s friend and patron, Peter Collinson, the
London linen draper who served as the most important middleman moving plants, seeds,
herbarium specimens, and live and preserved animals from the colonies into the gardens,
menageries, and cabinets of British and Continental collectors over the course of the mid-
eighteenth century. As with Bartram’s portrayals of all natural productions, the drawings were part of a larger collecting project involving specimens, both live and preserved, along with images and descriptions, which cumulatively were intended to provide as complete a picture as possible of the natural productions of North America—and, indeed, the full extent of the British empire across the globe—for Collinson and his clients.
Personal taste determined the particular shape of the individual commissions, and since
Collinson had a special fondness for tortoises, his requests for living examples, drawings, and specimens appear in some of his earliest orders to John Bartram, a number of years before William’s birth. After sending live “Terrapins,” as well as a clutch of tortoise eggs which hatched to Collinson’s great delight and wonder, the elder Bartram responded to his patron’s request for tortoise shells, in November of 1743, stating, “if thee wants ye shells of our turtles intir dryed I hope to send thee as many as thee wants next summer if
I had known that would have done I Could have sent enough before now I could preserve ye head feet & tail well enough .” That he was able to do so successfully is clear from a letter he wrote Collinson in April of 1746, when William was seven years old:
I have packed up in A box directed to thee 4 of our turtles dried after their bowels were taken out & well washed, having preserved thair shell head feet & tail intire by which you may observe ye difference of them almost as well as if thay had been alive.
21 These preserved turtle shells, replete with head, tail, and appendages, improved upon the
empty shells that most certainly accompanied shipments to Collinson, as well; but both
might have served in setting models for the presentation of species adopted by the young
William in his drawings.
As a small child, William almost certainly joined his brothers in collecting
tortoises for Collinson at the British merchant’s request, and he sent his first drawings
accompanied by live and preserved specimens, shells, and textual descriptions written by
his father. In attempting to distinguish among the many species native to the colonies,
Bartram often illustrated the dorsal and ventral views, according to Collinson’s
instructions, sometimes substituting a profile for the dorsal perspective, or including it, as
well. He always tried to show mature examples, adding the head, tail, and feet whenever
possible as defining attributes of the type. However, as Bartram’s paired drawings of
“The great Mud Tortoise from Pennsylvania” demonstrate quite clearly, his images were
generally part of a highly complex discussion about the nature of a species that might
never reach absolute resolution, despite the many materials mustered to provide an
understanding of the organism over an extended period of time. As in this instance, his
drawings often were constructed quite specifically in response to an exchange concerning
not only the physical attributes of the creature, but behavioral characteristics, as well. In
the instance of the “Great Mud Tortoise,” Collinson had become curious about a species described to him by an unknown source as the “great water turtle of new england”
sometime in the early 1750s, and he must have written to John Bartram asking him to
provide more information about the creature. On November 3, 1754, the elder Bartram
22 sent the following description, beginning a process of refining the animal’s definition that would take many years:
ye great water turtle of new england I take to be our great mud turtle which is much hunted for to feast our gentry withall & is reconed to be as delicious A morsel as those brought from ye summer Islands with this advantage that thay have ye same sauce & many of our Common people is fond of them who adds nothing to disguise ye tast but plain stewing & a good apetite they are very large of A dark muddy color large rough tail, feet with claws ye ould ones mossy on ye back & often several Large hors leeches sucking the superfluous blood A large head, sharp nose & mouth wide enough to cram ones fist in very sharp gums or lips which you will with which thay will catch hold of A stick offered to them or if you had rather your finger which they will hold so fast as you may lift ye turtle by it as high as your head if you have strength or courage enough to lift them up so high by it but as for their barking I believe thy relator barked instead of ye turtle thay creep all over in ye mud where thay lie perdu & when A duck or fish swims near them thay dart out thair head as quick as light & snap him up. thair eggs are round as A bullet & choice eating.
Just over a year after providing this textual sketch, describing the tortoise in terms of human use, morphological features, and characteristic interactions with human observers and prey, John Bartram sent a live specimen to Collinson. Collinson immediately began a process of comparison between Bartram’s written discussion and his own direct observations of the creature, noting:
My son & I were both surprised at the sight of the Great Mud Turtle it is really a formidable animal He bit very fierce at a Stick, he had near bit my finger thy former description is very good excepting His sharp hook at the point of Its Bill, & his shell being very jagged or Notch’d near his tail it made an uncouth noise, I can’t say barking but what a full grown one might do I can’t say it is really a Curiosity & Wee are oblig’d to the for sending it for Wee had no Notion of such an Animal—for writers in General content themselves by Saying theres Terrapins or Land & Water turtles &c
Testing Bartram’s account, Collinson and his son, Michael, tried the experiment of baiting the tortoise with a stick and at least attempted to lift the creature with a finger.
They both corroborated Bartram’s physical description and refined it, sending him their further observations on the jagged nature of the bill and shell, and insisting that the creature did, indeed, make “an uncouth noise,” if not the barking sound that Bartram had declared absurd in his own discussion of the creature.
23 Not satisfied with the picture provided by the description and the creature, itself,
however, Collinson desired another step in the process of defining the species, requesting
a drawing of a mature specimen from William’s hand:
I wish Billy could get one this [mature] Size and Draw it, in its Natural Dress—but pray Lett the Shell be well Wash’d that the Sutures of the shell may be well expressed, what Eye it has Wee can’t say for they Seem’d closed up as if Asleep. All the Species of Turtles Drawn as the come in yr way with some Account of them would prove a New piece of Natural History well worth knowing.
Over the ensuing three years, William sent a number of tortoise drawings that Collinson
greatly appreciated, but no drawing of the “Great Mud Tortoise” materialized from his
hand. Exasperated, Collinson complained to the boy’s father:
I wish it could be any ways contrived for him to give us a Draught of your Great Mud Turtle Our friend [George] Edwards wants to see It—I thought I had Lost that Thou Sent Mee—but last year I saw it several Times on the Water—but there is no catching It--& then I would Wish to have a Larger painted—and also to have its Shell for in all my Collection it has been forgot to send Me that shell which at least I should be glad of –if a Drawing cannot be had but its upper & under Side Should be Drawn
Although the live specimen in Collinson’s garden made an appearance from time to
time, it could nott be secured for examination on demand, and its immature size kept it
from serving to characterize the species in a satisfactory way. Collinson consequently
wished William to draw a fully-grown example, illustrating both the dorsal and ventral
sides, so that the animal could be defined according to its mature physical characteristics,
in the most complete scientific terms. At the very least, Collinson desired a shell for his
collection—but he yearned most for the drawings, with all of creature’s exterior
anatomical attributes fully realized in the most dynamic way.
William finally accommodated this request, sending not only his two drawings,
but also a more detailed report, penned with his father. Collinson was delighted by these
complementary materials, and hoped to publish the images and written account in The
Gentleman’s Magazine, as he had other drawings and descriptions of tortoises provided
24 by the Bartrams over the years (he did not pursue this possibility, however, noting that
the publishers would never do justice to the “Curious piece of Natural History” that his
friends had sent). Collinson’s particular pleasure over William’s drawings must have
derived, at least in part, from the fact that his young protégé’s images answered directly
to his own observations of the living specimen as he had expressed them in his letter to
John Bartram on receipt of the animal several years before. Indeed, William may well
have executed the images in response to Collinson’s account, reread at the time when he
finally was able to make his drawings. The profile view shows the tortoise as the “fierce”
creature Collinson described, with a “sharp hook at the point of Its Bill, & his shell being very jagged or Notch’d near his tail.” The tortoise also raises its head in reaction to some external stimulus, bellowing an “uncouth noise.” Its eye wide open and depicted in detail, and its shell clean-scrubbed and equally well delineated, the tortoise seems drawn
as much as a reflection of Collinson’s written observations and directives as of Bartram’s
own empirical experience of the beast. Signed by its author in bright red initials, “W B,”
the image serves as a chapter in an extended human exchange about the “Great Mud
Tortoise”—a piece of an ongoing human dialogue about a species of shared interest—
while also relaying an effective conception of the physical appearance of the animal
portrayed.
The ventral view of the tortoise also answers to Collinson’s instructions, showing
all the diagnostic features of head, tail, feet, and plastron, for which he called, while
presenting the creature as responsive and very much alive in its self-protective “posture”
(as the position of the tortoise is described in an inscription wrapped around the tail).
William’s two depictions of the “Great Mud Tortoise” recall and reference his patron’s
25 discussions of what such images should portray, sensitively incorporating elements of
Collinson’s own verbal portrait of the animal verbatim.
While Collinson found these images and the associated text written by the young
Bartram and his father definitive enough for publication, he continued to write of the baffling ways of the “Great Mud Tortoise” as the real creature itself emerged and disappeared mysteriously from view as it lived its elusive life in his garden. Truly knowing the tortoise—its habits and ways, as well as its appearance—was something that would always remain somewhat beyond grasp, as far as Collinson was concerned. In
August of 1761, he wrote triumphantly to John Bartram of his chance discovery of a technique to fish the tortoise up, after having lost sight of it at the bottom of the pond for a year-and-a-half. And in June of 1763, he again rejoiced at having found the creature, writing:
…a few Weeks agon Wee Caught the Great Mud Turtle thou formerly Sent Us—It is much grown & so fierce Wee was much Diverted with It—After some days Wee will putt him again in his Watery Habitation.
A period of observation might last some weeks, but after that time, the tortoise would have to return to the more natural habitat of the pond, out of sight and beyond understanding in the watery depths. In the same letter, Collinson remarked on the incomprehensible behavior of an associated species, the Mud Turtle, which the Bartrams had sent him some years before, and he noted his amazement over the Ohio Turtle given to him by another North American collector:
It is something Singular & I dare Saye the first attempt of the kind but the Mud Turtle had clambered up a whole pair of Stairs out of my Hall into the next floor. Led by what Instinct I don’t know, but there was no water upstairs There is no End to Creative Power & Infinite Wisdom in the Creation & formation of such Variety of Creatures—the Ohio Turtle I view with Astonishment
26 Marvelling over the infinite range of animal behavior and endless array of creatures to be observed in the world, Collinson understood, as William Bartram would by the time he was crafting his own letters to Benjamin Smith Barton several decades later, that to know nature truly was impossible, but that to study it was infinitely satisfying, providing an ever more gratifying basis for human dialogue. The picture of Creation one might produce, whether through the written word, the drawn image, the form of the garden, or the shape of a collection, might be as much the product of mental association, memory, and imagination, as of nature—but the attempt to produce this picture was an admirable pursuit and one to be undertaken communally, with colleagues pressing one another on through constant interchange. In praising William for his extraordinary talents as an artist describing the natural world through his drawings, Collinson wrote, in 1767, “When
Art is arrived to such perfection to Coppy Close after Nature, who can describe the pleasure, but them that feel it, to See the Moving Pensil: display a Sort of paper Creation, which may Endure for Ages & transfer a name with applause to Posterity.” The making of such a “paper Creation” as an end in itself was, for Collinson, a magnificent, indeed, a heroic undertaking, and one to be supported with every effort by those who knew the artist.
Bartram continued making his drawings of North American tortoises well into the 1760s and ‘70s, first for Collinson and then for John Fothergill, when he undertook his great expedition through the southern colonies under the doctor’s patronage. Constantly varying his approach, he tried every means possible to convey the best sense of these creatures that he could. As ever, the drawings often accompanied live and preserved specimens and shells, as well as written descriptions, adding cumulatively,
27 but from his vantage point, never sufficiently to a true understanding of the tortoises he
observed expressing their characteristic behaviors in their natural habitats, over time.
Nonetheless, he continued with the exercise, and, in 1793, found himself sending his
drawing of Testudo caelata to the young Benjamin Smith Barton, along with portrayals
of other animals that presented similar challenges, such as the weasel. The attempt to
convey as complete a picture as possible of the living world of nature to an audience
Collinson once described to Bartram’s father as “curious in our way,” and the excitement of involving another young naturalist in the process, was irresistible to Bartram. That he passed on to his protégé an infectious sense of the communal pleasures to be gained from this endeavor is clear from the long collegial exchange of materials and ideas in which they engaged over the course of the ensuing years. But that Barton also understood his mentor’s hesitancy over the ultimate efficacy of the pursuit is evident. Quite tellingly, he titled the work for which he relied most heavily on Bartram’s contributions his
Fragments of Natural History.
28