biography of Mark CATESBY (1683-1749)

Birth place: England

Death place: London

Profession: Naturalist-artist, etcher

Studied: Self-taught

Work: A copy of Catesby's Natural History is in the Rare Book Room, Library of Congress

Comments: Visited America twice. Spent 1712 -19 with his sister in Williamsburg (VA), gathering and sketching examples of plant life, traveling briefly to the West Indies and Bermuda, before returning to England in 1719. On his second trip, 1722-25, he traveled through Charleston (SC), Georgia, and Florida, recording the flora and fauna of those areas and making a stop in the Bahamas. The result of his American studies was the Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731-1743), for which Catesby etched approximately 100 plates, the first set of which he also colored himself. In recognition of his scientific work Catesby was elected to the Royal Society in 1733. A posthumously published volume, Hortus Britanno-Americanus, also contained a number of Catesby's etchings of American trees and shrubs, many of which he had himself introduced to English horticulturalists.

Sources: G&W; DAB and DNB; Comstock, An 18th Century Audubon;" repro. Art News (Aug. 1947), 1; Connoisseur (March 1948), 47-52. More recently, see Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 2: 11, 41, 74; Wright, Artists in Virgina Before 1900.