Antique prints and Passiflora art

Passion flower Passiflora | Antique prints

Julian Mackenzie of Bernard. J. Shapero Rare Books comments,

‘Some antique botanical prints were hand coloured for the original editions with great accuracy. This work was often done by families who worked off the original artists’ paintings by candlelight. The hours were long and the pay poor. Other black & white line drawings however were coloured either in part or all over, either at the time or many years later, purely for decorative purposes, thus the colours shown in any print, especially of the flowers, cannot necessarily be relied upon. In some cases artistic licence may have been used also with regard to leaf shape etc. It also appears that some images were copied from one source to another, sometimes with minor changes.’

I highly recommend Panteek’s Antique Prints for the purchase of original prints.