MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN
Frankfurt-am-Main 1647-1717 Amsterdam
Black Tegu Lizard (Tupinambis teguixin)
Inscribed, verso, N.100 uit Boek f. van Jan Bisschop’s Verk. te Rottm. Juni 1771/44-/ Een Surinaamsche Sauvegard, door Maria Sybilla Meriam
Pen and black ink and watercolor and gouache on vellum
13 x 17 inches
329 x 430 mm
Provenance
Jan Bisschop (1680/81-1771), Rotterdam (his sale: Rotterdam, Bosch and Arrenberg, 24 June 1771, Album A, lot 100: “Een Surinaamse Sauvegard door dezelven [i.e. Maria Sibylle Merian]” [with lots 101 and 102 to van der Marck for 35 fl.])
Johan van der Marck Ægzn (1707-1772), Leiden (no mark; see Lugt 3001) (his sale: Amsterdam, de Winter & IJver, 29 November 1773, Album H, lot 717: “Een Surinaamse Sauve-Garde; als vooen getekend” [i.e. with watercolor on vellum] [with lot 716 to “Delfos” for 7 fl.])
Dr. Jan Tak, Leiden (his sale: Haarlem, Jan van de Vinne, 10 October 1780, Album B, lot 170: “Een Surinaamsche Sauvegarde, uitvoerigmet eaterverw op pergament getekend, door Sybille Merian” [to “Heemskerck” for 20 fl.])
Jonkheer L.J. Quarles van Ufford (his sale: Haarlem, 23 March 1784, Album 4, lot 174: “La Sauvegarde de Surinam. Aquarelle très soignée”)
Sale: London, Sotheby’s, 7 July 1999, lot 37, illustrated
Exhibitions
New York, W. M. Brady & Co., in association with Thomas Williams Fine Art, London, Old Master Drawings, 2000, cat. no. 24, illustrated
Literature
J. S. Turner, with contributions by F. Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 154, illustrated
This drawing served as the model in reverse for the engraving that appears as plate 70 in the third edition of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (The Hague, 1726; first edition, Amsterdam, 1705).
THE MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, NEW YORK