Johanna Helena Herolt-Graff (Frankfurt am Main 1668-1723/43)

This drawing belongs to a group of 21 natural history watercolours by the same hand which emerged from the van Pallandt collection in 1972. They were described in the sale as Anton Henstenburgh (1695-1781), but Sam Segal later suggested that the drawings should be given to Johanna Herolt-Graf.

Herolt-Graf was both daughter and colleague of the successful botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). Though Joanna Helena could mimic her mother’s work, she developed an individual style of which the present drawing is a characteristic example. It is typical of her confident use of pictorial space with its intertwining flowers stretched to fill the sheet. Still, despite Joanna Helena’s unique approach, the influence of Maria Sybilla Merian was enormous. The choice of subject, for example, is clearly connected to her mother’s publication on moths and caterpillars, Die Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und Sonderbare Blumennahrung, published in Nürnberg and Frankfurt, 1679-83 which was illustrated throughout with similar depictions of the metamorphosis of moths.