Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 - 1717) - Woman of Art and Science
This site includes links to biographies and books about her life and work. Plus online galleries and exhibitions which display her work.
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- Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian
- Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science
- Exhibitions of Maria Sibylla Merian's work
- BOOKS: About or by Maria Sibylla Merian
- Online galleries of the work of Maria Sibylla Merian
- Giclee Poster Prints of art by Maria Sybilla Merian
- Botanical Artists - Gardens & Herbals
- Botanical Artists - Explorers
- Resources for botanical artists
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Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian
- Maria Sibylla Merian
- A biography of Maria Sibylla Merian - with links to reference sites
- Natural History Exhibit Chronological Tour - Maria Sibylla Merian
- Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) learned to paint from her stepfather, the still life artist Jacob Marrel.
She was interested in flowers and insects from an early age, and published books of her paintings, showing insects in different stages of their development, - Maria Sibylla Merian, a Gift Person essay by Linda Fisher
- Artist and Entomologist (1647-1717) "Not for my own glory, but for the glory of God alone, who created such wonders."
- National Museum of Womenin the Arts - Maria sibylla Merian
- Artist Profile
Artist Portfolio
Maria Sibylla Merian German - Maria Sibylla Merian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Maria Sibylla Merian (born April 2, 1647 in Frankfurt - died January 13, 1717 in Amsterdam) was a naturalist and scientific illustrator who studied plants and insects and made detailed paintings about them. Her detailed observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly make her a significant, albeit not well known, contributor to entomology.
- Maria Sibylla Merian artist - naturalist | Magazine Antiques | Find Articles at BNET.com
- Maria Sibylla Merian artist - naturalist
Article about Merian and her work in Magazine Antiques in Home & Garden (2000)
provided free by Find Articles. - Maria Sibylla Merian: Biography from Answers.com
- Maria Sibylla Merian ( b Frankfurt am Main, 2 April 1647; d Amsterdam, 13 Jan 1717).
- Strange Science - Maria Sibylla Merian
- In a world of natural history generalists, Maria Sibylla Merian, (also known as Maria Sybilla Merian) was a specialist, concentrating almost her entire life on how moths and butterflies metamorphosed from caterpillars. In her early 50s, she followed her passion halfway around the world and risked death from disease to study these bugs in their natural habitat.
Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science
by Ella Reitsma
After more than fifteen years of marriage to a fellow artist and the birth of two daughters, Merian left her husband. She began to support herself by selling watercolors of insects, fruit, and flowers, eventually establishing an art business in Amsterdam with her daughters, Johanna Helen and
Dorothea Maria.
Merian's innovative compositional style--displaying the life cycle of an insect against the background of its host plant--developed out of her own careful and painstakingly recorded observations of insect metamorphoses.
Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science
Amazon Price: (as of 11/09/2009)
Ella Rietsma is the first author to attempt to separate Merian's work from that of her two daughters, who collaborated extensively with their mother.
Reitsma also includes newly discovered drawings and fresh biographical details.
This book - published by Getty Publications (June 15, 2008) - coincides with an exhibition of Merian's work on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from June 10 through August 31, 2008.
Exhibitions of Maria Sibylla Merian's work
- Royal Collection - Amazing Rare Things
- Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was one of the greatest artist-naturalists of her time.
From childhood she had been fascinated by the life cycles of butterflies, and she made a close study of their transformations. She became a flower-painter and teacher in Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.
Inspired by exotic specimens imported from the Dutch colonies for the natural history collections of Holland, in 1699, at the age of fifty-two, Merian made an expedition to Surinam (Dutch Guiana) in South America. Her aim was to study the indigenous flora and fauna in their tropical habitat. On her return to Amsterdam two years later, she began work on a lavishly illustrated book, the Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium ('The Metamorphoses of the Insects of Surinam', published in 1705), depicting the life cycles of the region's insects.
The exhibition includes de luxe watercolours (painted on vellum) of the plates of the Metamorphosis. The 95 watercolours by Merian in the Royal Collection were bought in 1755 by George III, when Prince of Wales. - Getty Center: Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science
- Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science
June 10-August 31, 2008
This is the first major exhibition of Merian's work in America.
Maria Sibylla Merian (German, 1647-1717) was a pioneering woman of art, science, and business. She was an accomplished painter of flowers and insects and an entomologist from an early age. In her fifties, she traveled to Suriname, then a Dutch colony in South America, to study extraordinary insects first hand. Working with her two daughters, Merian made and produced one of the greatest illustrated natural history books of all time, The Insects of Suriname. This exhibition introduces Maria Sibylla Merian to American audiences and focuses on natural history illustration, which is one of the most accessible and engaging art forms. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Museum Het Rembrandthuis, the exhibition travels to Los Angeles after its presentation in Amsterdam and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue. - Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science (Getty Center Exhibitions)
- Exhibition slideshow
- Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters (Getty Press Release)
- February 20, 2008 press release announcing the Merian exhibition at the Getty Museum. Contains details about both Merian, her work and the exhibition
- Making a Mark: Maria Sibylla Merian - at the Getty Museum, Buckingham Palace and Kew Gardens
- Maria Sibylla Merian was both a Naturalist and a Botanical Illustrator. She's rated as being one of the greatest ever artists of botanical and entomological subjects. Her profile has never been higher - and she currently features significantly in three major exhibitions in the USA and London.
BOOKS: About or by Maria Sibylla Merian
books on Amazon
Flowers, Butterflies and Insects: All 154 Engravings from "Erucarum Ortus" (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Fine-line images of roses, butterflies, tulips, caterpillars and other specimens of plant and insect life in elegant full-page compositions. These plates are considered among the finest achievements of a great age of floral painting and the engraver's art. Reprinted from the classic, influential works of the famed artist/entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). New English captions. Copyright-free.
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Amazon Price: $11.21 (as of 11/09/2009)
Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist And Naturalist
A catalog of exhibition held at Historisches Museum in Frankfurt am Main in the winter of 1997/98.
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Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis
Before Darwin, before Audubon, before Gilbert White, there was Merian. An artist turned naturalist, known for her botanical illustrations, Maria Sybilla Merian was born in Germany just sixteen years after Galileo proclaimed that the earth orbited the sun. But at the age of fifty she sailed from Europe to the New World on a solo scientific expedition to study insect metamorphosis - an unheard-of journey for any naturalist at that time, much less an unaccompanied woman. When she returned she produced a book that secured herreputation, only to have it savaged in the nineteenth century by scientists who disdained the work of 'amateurs'.
Exquisitely written and illustrated, Chrysalis takes us from golden-age Amsterdam to the Surinam tropics tomodern laboratories where Merian?s insights fuel a new branch of biology. Kim Todd brilliantly brings to lifea seventeenth-century woman whose boldness and vision would still be exceptional today and restores her toher rightful position amongst those scientists who have changed the way we view the world.
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Amazon Price: $11.25 (as of 11/09/2009)
Merian's Antique Botanical Prints CD-ROM and Book (Pictorial Archives)
From a beautiful 17th-century botanical publication - all 153 black-and-white images of insects and plants by an artist renowned for her scientific eye and precise detail. The engravings of roses, lilies, carnations, and other plants, as well as butterflies and insects, will be of use to graphic artists, craftspeople, students, and historians.
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Amazon Price: $11.53 (as of 11/09/2009)
Maria Sibylla Merian: New Book of Flowers (Art & Design)
The Book of Flowers, published in Nuremburg between 1675 and 1680 in three volumes of twelve sheets, is the first work that Maria Sibylla Merian published and marketed herself. Its enormous success encouraged her to reprint and colour all 36 plates, adding a preface before publishing it in 1680 as the New Book of Flowers. As Merian herself expressed in her foreward, the publication was meant to be an inspiration to others: "In that it may be useful for traveling and painting, and for the women to sew, and all lovers of art for benefit and joy."
The elegance, delicate colours, and detailed scientific accuracy captured in her exquisite drawings of flowers are beautifully reproduced in this volume. Merian's New Book of Flowers, first published in 1680, continues to be a source of fascination throughout the world today.
(Note English translation from original which was in German)
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Online galleries of the work of Maria Sibylla Merian
- WOMEN AND NATURE: Maria Sibylla Merian
- WOMEN & NATURE exhibition 2001
Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Maria Sibylla Merian. Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe Verlag, 1964. - Galerie Anna Sibylla Merian
- Kupferstiche von Maria Sibylla Merian
- Maria Sibylla Merian - artist portfolio
- Artist Portfolio - Maria Sibylla Merian
- Anna Sibylla Merian "Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium"
- Kupferstiche von Maria Sibylla Merian
- Galerie Anna Sibylla Merian - Neues Blumenbuch
- Kupferstiche von Maria Sibylla Merian
- Maria Sibylla Merian Online
- Maria Sibylla Merian [German Baroque Era Illustrator, 1647-1717] Guide to pictures of works by Maria Sibylla Merian in art museum sites and image archives worldwide.
- British Museum - Maria Sibylla Merian, A Surinam caiman fighting a South American false coral snake, a drawing
- Maria Sibylla Merian, A Surinam caiman fighting a South American false coral snake, a drawing
- Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium Images 1 to 8
- Audubon House Gallery of Natural History, Key West, Florida
The Oppenheimer Kew Gardens Edition
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium
Giclee Poster Prints of art by Maria Sybilla Merian
posters and prints from Amazon
Pineapple (Ananas) with Surinam Insects Art Giclee Poster Print by Maria Sibylla Merian, 12x16
Amazon Price: $39.99 (as of 11/09/2009)
Garden Treasures VII Decorative Art Poster Print by Maria Sibylla Merian, 14x18
Amazon Price: $59.99 (as of 11/09/2009)
Nature's Bounty II Botanical Art Poster Print by Maria Sibylla Merian, 14x18
Amazon Price: $89.99 (as of 11/09/2009)
Garden Treasures IX World Culture Art Poster Print by Maria Sibylla Merian, 14x18
Amazon Price: $59.99 (as of 11/09/2009)
Garden Treasures IX Art Poster Print by Maria Sibylla Merian, 14x18
Amazon Price: $59.99 (as of 11/09/2009)
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