Present Locations of Bartram’s Artwork

here are today, three major known repositories of Bartram’s original drawings. Many of the pictures in Peter Collinson’s collection were purchased from his estate in 1834 by Aylmer B. Lambert, a celebrated antiquarian and botanist. After Lambert’s death, the collection was purchased by Edward Smith Stanley, the thirteenth Earl of Derby (1775–1851). The collection, consisting of twenty-eight drawings of birds, twelve of trees in flower and fruit done for Collinson before Bartram’s 1765 trip to Florida, and several later works, are still in the library of the 18th Earl of Derby at Knowsley Hall.(280)

Most of John Fothergill’s collection of Bartram drawings was purchased by England’s great botanist Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) after the Doctor’s death in 1780. In 1827, the Banks collection (which included two of Bartram’s manuscript journals as well) was transferred to the British Museum according to Banks' will. These drawings, some early sketches from the Collinson collection, and a few later ones made for Robert Barclay, were later moved to the Natural History Museum and are now in the Botany Department Library of that museum.(28l) These have been reproduced in William Bartram; Botanical and Zoological Drawings, 1756–1788 (Ewan; American Philosophical Society, 1968).

Although Bartram scholars have never had a chance to confirm it, there is evidence to suggest that presently in the possession of the Hermitage in Leningrad, are a number of Bartram drawings which make up part of the vast collection of natural history art gathered by Empress Catherine II of Russia.(282) Further research on this collection would provide valuable insights into the entire body of Bartram’s works as an artist.

The only William Bartram drawings to have remained in the United States are those originally owned by botanist Benjamin Smith Barton and William Hamilton. These include several made on the 1773–1777 southern trip (or at his home shortly thereafter) for Bartram’s own use, and others drawn expressly to illustrate Barton’s book, Elements of Botany. These drawings, mostly dating from Bartram’s third stylistic period, have passed through the hands of Barton family members and are now in the possession of the American Philosophical Society.

Footnotes

280. Ewan, Bartram Drawings, op. cit., pp. 31–32.

281. Ibid., p. 31.

282. The Bartram Trail Conference is indebted to Dr. Joseph Ewan of Tulane University for information concerning this collection.