A pomegranate (Punica granatum)

One of the most celebrated botanical artists of his day, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues combined precise observation with an aesthetic sophistication developed from his probable early training as an illuminator. Although his surviving works are very rare, Paul Hulton proposed a chronology for Le Moyne in his 1977 British Museum catalogue (P. Hulton, The Works of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues: A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida and England, London, 1977). He identifies a marked development from the precise but detached studies of plants in an early album in the Victoria & Albert Museum (op. cit., nos. 1-33), datable to around 1566, to the 'more subjective, refined and altogether more sophisticated products of his last years' (op. cit., p. 77). These were represented for Hulton by the fifty watercolors on paper in an album in the British Museum, datable to 1585 (Hulton, nos. 36-86) and the group of more elaborate drawings formerly in the Korner collection and then sold at Sotheby's, New York, 29 January 1997 (lots 55-60; op. cit., nos. 87-92). The present work, with its miniaturist richness, has much in common with the Korner watercolors, especially in its use of a colored background of vivid ultramarine and the presentation of the pomegranate in striking, almost sculptural relief. It can be similarly dated to the 1580s. An extensive pigment analysis carried out by Libby Sheldon of University College London has confirmed that all the paints used in the present work - ultramarine, crimson lake, lead white and black - are absolutely consistent with a date of execution in the 16th century.

In the 1580s Le Moyne was living in London as a Huguenot refugee, working under the patronage of Lady Mary Sidney (c.1530/36-1586) - as well as that of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), whose interests focused on Le Moyne's experiences as official artist to a French expedition in Florida in 1564-66. In seeking to represent a plant in a way that was both naturalistically accurate and aesthetically pleasing, Le Moyne was emblematic of his time. By the late 16th century in England, as in Europe more generally, herbalists were publishing new works to reflect their more profound, precise knowledge of plants and their properties - such as the great Herball of 1597 by Le Moyne's contemporary John Gerard (1545-1611). Plants were also being increasingly valued by the pleasure they could offer the eye, a development reflected in the first great garden schemes such as those drawn up by John Tradescant the Elder (1608-1662), and in the development of natural history painting exemplified to such impressive effect by Le Moyne and his peers such as Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1601).