Some things in this life never change. Take writing and book publishing for example. Author and artist Titian Peale—1799-1885—worked on his book, The Butterflies of North America, beginning with a prospectus in 1833. When he died, fifty two years later, the book was still unfinished and Peale had no commitment from a publisher. In 1916, one of his descendants donated the manuscript to the American Museum of Natural History. Now, 130 years from Peale’s death, the book has finally found its way to print under the museum’s aegis. Somewhere, perhaps sitting in the ether amidst a cloud of butterflies, Titian Peale is smiling.
Better late than never. The newly published volume is an inspiration. The Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale’s Lost Manuscript will fascinate nature and butterfly lovers. Gardeners can glory in the depictions of the various host and food plants. Botanical art aficionados will find themselves caught up in the impeccable illustrations. Some of the butterflies’ generic or species names have changed, but otherwise, the book is still an excellent guide to common and a few not-so-common North American butterflies. Page 98, for example, depicts one of my favorite local butterflies, the Mourning Cloak or Nymphalis antiopa, which is depicted with its cream-banded, dark purple wings spread wide. In good scholarly fashion, the same plate portrays the insect with wings folded, alongside the caterpillar and chrysalis. The caterpillar is chomping on what appear to be willow leaves, a mourning cloak favorite.
Titian Ramsay Peale came by his artistic talent and scholarly interests honestly. He was one of sixteen children of Charles Willson Peale, noted artist, politico, naturalist, inventor, museum founder and all-around eighteenth century man-of-many-interests. The elder Peele ranked Washington, Hamilton and Franklin among his portrait subjects. One of Peale’s conceits was naming some of his offspring after noted artists. As the result, Titian Peale had brothers including Raphaelle, Rembrandt and Rubens. He was named after his deceased older brother, Titian, who was also an artist/butterfly enthusiast.
Gorgeous though they are, Titian Peale’s collection of butterfly portraits is nowhere near as comprehensive as the book’s title suggests. However, he covered a number of species, like the common monarch—Danaus plexippus—that still frequent the northeastern United States. Page 66 is home to the cabbage white—Pieris rapae–possibly the most common butterfly in my part of the world, depicted while flitting among the flowers of a cruciferous—cabbage family—plant.
The edition includes the artist’s neatly written titles and descriptions, as well as notebook pages and sketches of his subjects, all of which give the reader a good appreciation of the Peele’s process. The images were gleaned from observation in the wild and detailed study of captive butterflies and moths, as well as their larvae and host plants. Some other authors of the time, like wealthy William Henry Edwards, who beat Peale to the punch, by publishing his three-volume work, also called Butterflies of North America, between 1868 and 1897, paid various artists to paint the butterflies, restricting their efforts to writing the texts and assembling the finished product.
In this digital age, when everything imaginable is available on the Internet, what is the value of a lavishly illustrated butterfly book that is over 100 years old? First, Peale’s book is beautiful and stands alone as a collection of works of botanical art. Second, it gives readers a reminder of the fragility, as well as the continuity of the life of the natural world that exists all around us. When we plant “wildlife gardens” we are playing a role in sustaining the same species that Titian Peale thought worthy of study in the nineteenth century. Cultivating butterfly host and food plants in our gardens today will help sustain the butterflies in the twenty-first.
When I studied botanical illustration, the discipline honed my observational skills and gave me a new way of seeing plants and all their parts. Those revelations have informed my gardening life ever since. I will never be a Titian Peale, but now I am aware of the myriad colors in a single flower petal or butterfly’s wing. Informed “seeing”—of any and all species–can bring understanding to a whole new level.
So, when the weather is questionable and you need inspiration, find it in the pages of The Butterflies of North America. When you think life is tedious, remember Titian Peale, who spent his working life as a patent clerk while dreaming of butterflies. And finally, when you think about seeds and plants for next spring and summer’s garden, remember to use a few of the species depicted by Peale in his book. The butterflies will thank you.