Plumer Society event: ‘The Birds and the Bees: Nature in Victorian Colour’

‘The Birds and the Bees: Nature in Victorian Colour’

Join us on the 25th May at 6pm on Zoom where we will hear from Maddie Hewitson, Research Assistant in the Western Art Print Room of the Ashmolean Museum on nature and colour in Victorian art. To sign up, please click here.

Following John Ruskin’s dictum to ‘go to nature in all singleness of heart… rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing’, many Victorian artists were drawn outdoors to revel in the offerings of the natural world. Against the backdrop of Charles Darwin’s defining publication On the Origin of Species (1859), the plumage of a bird, the iridescent shimmer of a fish scale and the delicate hue of butterfly wings took on a new, exciting significance for artists.  

These representations of the natural world will be analysed from the perspective of colour and examine how artists learned from the animal and plant kingdoms as they developed their palettes.  This research is part of a forthcoming exhibition at the museum, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design’ and many of the drawings discussed will feature in the show.

This event is for members of the St Anne’s Plumer Society, for more information on the Plumer Society, please follow this link.