Mark Catesby Prints
1683–1749 · English · Natural history illustration
Wall art by Mark Catesby, restored in-house and printed to order on heavyweight matte fine-art paper.
339 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
About Mark Catesby
Mark Catesby was born in March 1683 at Castle Hedingham in Essex. In 1712 he sailed to Williamsburg, Virginia and spent seven years collecting plants and seeds before returning to England in 1719. Backed by members of the Royal Society, he went back to America in 1722, based himself at Charleston in South Carolina, collected there and in the Bahama Islands, and came home in 1726 with drawings and specimens. To keep the cost within reach he taught himself to etch the copper plates. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands appeared in parts from 1729: the first volume, devoted to birds, was finished in 1732, the second, with fishes, reptiles, mammals, insects and plants, in 1743, and an Appendix followed in 1747, 220 plates in all, with a few plates after Georg Dionysius Ehret, among them the celebrated Southern Magnolia. Catesby set most of his animals against the plants they lived among, a habit Audubon would make famous a century later. Linnaeus drew on the book for the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758, citing Catesby for 81 birds, so that many North American species carry names first fixed on his figures. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733 and died in London in December 1749.