Summary

Watercolour, pencil and ink illustrations of an Australian Painted Lady, Vanessa kershawi, by Arthur Bartholomew, depicted on the host plant, the introduced Cape Weed, Cryptostommon calendulacea. These illustrations were commissioned by Frederick McCoy, the first Director of The National Museum of Victoria, for Plate 198 in The Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria; Figures and descriptions of the living species of all classes of the Victoria indigenous animals.

Bartholomew created this work well before 1868 when McCoy formally described the species as Cynthia kershawi, naming it after "my excellent friend, William Kershaw, the senior taxidermist at the Melbourne Museum, who made our singularly fine and extensive local collection of the Insects of Victoria, and whose unequalled knowledge of the habits and distribution of our Insects, and extraordinary zeal and devotion to his duties as my assistant in this branch of the Museum, I acknowledge, with great pleasure, by dedicating the species to him". McCoy subsequently placed the species in the genus Pyrameis, giving it the vernacular name Blue-spotted Painted-Lady Butterfly.

These illustrations form part of the Museum's much larger Prodromus Collection. Many of the original illustrations and prints in the collection informed the production of The Prodromus, the first major publication of the National Museum of Victoria. Between 1878 and 1890, McCoy published his zoology 'Prodromus' as 20 parts in two volumes, with each part comprising 20 Plates. Unfortunately, almost 90 plates in the collection remain unpublished, and hundreds of illustrations were either not completed or not printed.

Description of Content

Australian Painted Lady, Pyrameis Kershawi McCoy & Australian Admiral , Vanessa itea Fabricus by Arthur Bartholomew (Del). Drawing - Pencil, water colour and varnish on paper, 14 cm X 19 cm.. Draiwng 255 & 256 (on a single page) finally published as Plate 198 in The Prodromus of Zoology by Frederick McCoy.

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