Lewisham born Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) illustrated a number of well-known children’s books in the early 1900s, including Aesop’s Fables, Gulliver’s Travels and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. His work became intrinsically linked to the stories, with abiding memories based on the visuals he created. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie was published in 1906 and …
Edward Lear (1812-1888) had his own take on the Linnean system of binomial nomenclature, using it to create crazy nonsense plant names to label crazy nonsense plant illustrations. All of which are enduring, humorous triumphs. Today, we have well defined botanical rules when naming plant species, the foundations of which were laid by Swedish natural …
The online Digitalt Museum collects together images from a number of different Swedish museums. It currently has over half a million artworks in the Public Domain and hundreds of thousands more that are free to use with the appropriate Creative Commons licence. A search on ‘träd’ (tree in Swedish), ‘photograph’ and ‘Public Domain’, returns a wonderful collection of black and …
Plant cartoons care of the Comic Strip Library. Published between 1913 and 1944 Krazy Kat was an American newspaper comic strip by cartoonist George Herriman (1880–1944). Supplying off-beat gentle humour it coined the well known phrase “Krazy Kat”. These works are now in the Public Domain both in the US and in the UK. Note: …
These floral borders are available from the British Library flickr photostream. The way they are scanning even the smallest graphic detail from old books for our artistic use is rather pleasing. This selection has been straightened, enhanced and cropped to better show-off each design, but the originals, plus over a million more free digitised artworks …
Free plant art today from Robert John Thornton’s (c. 1768–1837) “A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnaeus – Part III”, a.k.a the “Temple of Flora”. These large-format plates were engraved by Thomas Medland in May 1798, from paintings by Philip Reinagle, with the book finally being published in 1807. It was …
More Public Domain artwork, this time from the book ‘A monograph of Odontoglossum’ by James Bateman. Published in 1874 by L. Reeve & co., London. Checking the current standing of the species names via the Catalogue of Life and The Plant List, it looks as if all the species illustrated below have been reclassified into …
These artworks are taken from the book Wild flowers of the Pacific coast. From original water color sketches drawn from nature by Emma Homan Thayer (E.H.T). It was published in New York c.1887 by Cassell & Company, limited. Its old age denotes it is now in the Public Domain meaning all images are free to …
Not all plants this time! The final Volume of Franz Eugen Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen or Medicinal Plants published in 1887 features red algae and fungi too. But the nature lovers that we are, we have left them in. See previous posts for Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3 with associated book and source details. The …
Artwork from Volume 3 of Franz Eugen Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen or Medicinal Plants published in 1887. See previous posts for Volume 1 and Volume 2 with associated book and source details. The age of this book is over 75 years which in Europe denotes it is the Public Domain making all images copyright free. The species …