Scientific illustration is the art of depicting scientific subjects accurately for the purposes of study, explanation and record. It includes botanical, zoological, anatomical, geological, astronomical and medical images, as well as diagrams of instruments and experiments, and it was traditionally produced in drawings, watercolours and printed plates.
From the Renaissance onwards, printed books spread scientific knowledge through woodcuts and later copperplate engravings, and the great age of exploration and natural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced magnificent illustrated works on plants, birds, shells and animals. Artists such as Georg Dionysius Ehret, the Bauer brothers, John James Audubon and John Gould are among the best known, while the development of lithography and chromolithography made coloured plates more widely available. Many prints on the market were removed from books, so collectors look at the date and edition, the quality of the impression, whether colouring is original and of the period, and the condition of the paper, checking for foxing, staining and trimming. Original preparatory drawings are rarer and more valuable. Framed in sets, scientific plates bring order, interest and a sense of learning to libraries, studies and corridors.
