Johannes WEINMANN

Gourds ~ Cucurbita

22.5 x 18.5 inches

This print comes from a series of over a thousand images that were done for the Phytanthoza, although very few are double page studies like this one. Various artists, including Georg Ehret, were commissioned to produce the drawings that were then worked onto copper plates. They were printed in outline colour and then completed by hand. Occasionally, as with this print, the plates are done by mezzotint and the entire image is colour printed. Johannes Wilhelm Weinmann was an apothecary from Regensburg in Germany who first commissioned Georg Ehret, the great eighteenth century illustrator, to produce a thousand drawings of plants. After a year on only a modest salary Ehret had produced only 500 of the drawings. Weinmann grew impatient at the lack of progress and Ehret stopped working. Other artists finished the project and Ehret received no credit in the final publication. When the work was finally published, however, it was met with wide acclaim and there was much admiration for the wonderful colour printing. The plates remain some of the most decorative and sought after flower prints from the first half of the eighteenth century.