Transformations Harriet and Helena Scott, Colonial Sydney's Finest Natural History Painters

About this book

With their collecting boxes, notebooks and paintbrushes, Harriet and Helena Scott entered the masculine worlds of science and art and became two of nineteenth-century Australia's most prominent natural history painters. Transformations tells the complete story of the Scott sisters for the first time – their early lives in colonial Sydney, their training as naturalists and artists on the isolated Ash Island in the Hunter River near Newcastle, and their professional triumphs. This is a rare pictorial record of two talented and determined women who transformed nature into art in their extraordinary paintings of Australian butterflies and moths.

Contents

Introduction

1. 'Bird mad, shell mad and insect mad'
2. Mr Scott's clever daughters
3. The Blue Notebook
4. On Ash Island
5. Australian Lepidoptera and Their Transformations, Volume 1
6. Last days at Ash Island
7. 'We are now business people'
8. `The last of the artist-naturalists' Epilogue

Customer Reviews

Biography

Vanessa Finney is a curator, historian and archivist. At the Australian Museum she manages the country's oldest and largest natural history archives and rare books collection.