{"id":6156,"date":"2015-08-27T12:37:16","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T12:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6156"},"modified":"2015-08-26T21:52:40","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T21:52:40","slug":"hairstreak-daggerwing-checkerspot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6156","title":{"rendered":"Coontie hairstreak, stinky leafwing, yucca, snout, et. al."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ascia<\/a><\/p>\n

A New York Times\u00a0review<\/a> of a book about butterflies and moths, unfinished and never published in its author’s life, sounds as if it’s worth a look. I see\u00a0there will be illustrations of leaves in it. I’ve been laboring with the job of rendering peony leaves in oil paint over the past couple weeks–it might do my\u00a0morale good to see how someone else succeeded or fell short\u00a0in the effort. But I’m interested in this fellow’s project on its own merits. A\u00a0few days after my wife and I moved into our little A-frame-like gingerbread house in Utica, New York, back in the 80s, we found\u00a0a cecropia moth slowly fanning its wings on a rock in the little overgrown garden left behind by the previous owners. It seemed more animal than insect. With wings spread, it was as large as my hand. The symmetrical patterns in those scaled appendages, intricate and abstract, looked like eyes or planets. And this, in turn, reminds me that I have yet to write a full response to the fantastic retrospective\u00a0of Emmet Gowin’s photographs\u00a0at the Morgan–this book of lepidoptera<\/em>\u00a0coincidentally echoes Gowin’s\u00a0humble, obsessive two-decade photographic pursuit of butterflies and moths in South America.<\/p>\n

The book described below, The Butterflies of North America<\/em>, includes the drawings\u00a0by a fellow\u00a0artist\/observer, Titian Peale (who seemed to be named after two earlier<\/em>\u00a0artists.) Anyone who undertakes any artistic project that stretches over\u00a0decades\u00a0is automatically interesting, yet the names of his winged insects\u00a0alone are a treat:<\/p>\n

. . .\u00a0you\u2019ll discover the Mexican dartwhite and the Pacific orangetip, the yucca and the duskywing skipper, the coontie hairstreak and the sunset daggerwing, the stinky leafwing and the patch checkerspot \u2014 not to mention the Eastern comma and the mourning cloak. There are moths here, too: the yellow-necked prominent, the white-marked tussock, the satellite Sphinx and the snout.<\/p>\n

The book, unfinished and unpublished when Peale died in 1885, represents more than 50 years of work. The manuscript ended up in the rare book collection<\/a> of the American Museum of Natural History<\/a>, where it somehow languished after it was donated by a family member in 1916. All of Peale\u2019s artwork and some of his field notes from the manuscript are being published next week as \u201cThe Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale\u2019s Lost Manuscript.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peale, who spent much of his life as an assistant examiner with the United States Patent Office<\/a>, could never have lived up to the original title; there are, after all, several thousand species of Lepidoptera in North America. But what he did leave us is revelation enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cButterflies\u201d features more than 200 works of art \u2014 in gouache, watercolor, ink and pencil \u2014 that through Peale\u2019s sharp but sensuous eye show the life cycle of moths and butterflies, from egg to caterpillar to pupa to winged adult. These striking illustrations are complemented by notes, studies and sketches in Peale\u2019s hand from his field books.<\/p>\n

Peale \u201cconsidered scientific description and graphic representation entirely commensurate and complementary modes of attention to the natural world,\u201d the art historian Kenneth Haltman<\/a> writes in the book\u2019s biographical essay.<\/p>\n

Each caterpillar, often paired with its preferred food, is precisely drafted. Peale takes clear pleasure in depicting each foot, bristle and segment in tiny strokes. \u201cWalking, bending, and inching up branches, Peale\u2019s caterpillars are a tour de force<\/em> of observational art,\u201d Tom Baione, director of the museum\u2019s research library, writes in the introduction to the section.<\/p>\n

We may marvel at the sheer biological persistence of the 17-year locust, but consider: Titian Peale\u2019s lost illustrations are finally seeing the light of day after a metamorphosis lasting nearly 200 years.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A New York Times\u00a0review of a book about butterflies and moths, unfinished and never published in its author’s life, sounds as if it’s worth a look. I see\u00a0there will be illustrations of leaves in it. I’ve been laboring with the job of rendering peony leaves in oil paint over the past couple weeks–it might do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCoontie hairstreak, stinky leafwing, yucca, snout, et. al. - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6156\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coontie hairstreak, stinky leafwing, yucca, snout, et. al. - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A New York Times\u00a0review of a book about butterflies and moths, unfinished and never published in its author’s life, sounds as if it’s worth a look. 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