Famous for his development of the sottobosco, a specific type of still life depicting lizards, frogs, and creatures of the forest floor, Otto Marseus van Schrieck (1619/1620–1678) also painted more conventional flower pieces. The Dutch painter traveled widely, spending time in England and France before moving to Italy in the company of his pupil, Willem van Aelst (1627–after 1687) before 1652. Once there, he worked in Rome for several years before he moved on to Florence, where his meticulous botanical and zoological paintings attracted the interest of the more scientifically minded members of the Medici family.(1) Upon his return to Amsterdam in about 1656, Schrieck settled down to paint, collect art, and raise the reptiles, amphibians, and insects that feature so prominently in many of his works.(2) His followers, including Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), carried his subject matter and techniques well into the eighteenth century.

While at first glance the Morning-Glory Vine with Three Butterflies appears to be a simple watercolor, microscopic examination reveals van Schrieck’s use of an unusual technique: he pressed real butterfly wings onto a prepared ground on paper, leaving a powdery colored residue in the pattern of the original butterfly. He then cut out these counterproofs and glued them to the sheet seen here, filling in any losses in the pattern with watercolor.(3) Van Schrieck used this technique in a number of his oil paintings, sometimes supplementing the counterproofs with real insect parts, ranging from butterfly wings to fly legs.(4) Similar practices have been detected in the works of a number of artists in van Schrieck’s circle, including Ruysch. The Morning-Glory and Butterflies proves that he used the same technique in his drawings, which are extremely rare.(5)

In contrast to the meticulous delicacy of the butterfly wings, the flowers and vine are summarily executed. Clearly this watercolor was not intended to provide the artist with an accurate visual record of the plant for later use in his paintings. Instead, it was probably conceived as a finished work of art in its own right. Van Schrieck may have considered the morning glory a prop for the butterflies, leading the viewer to focus on his unusual technique. As flowers that bloom and fade within a day, however, they could have contributed to the meaning of the image as a whole, working in harmony with the fragile butterflies to remind the beholder of the transience of life. In his larger, more elaborate sottoboschi and flower pieces, Schrieck returned a number of times to this theme, though the meanings of his still lifes are often complex and open to multiple interpretations.(6)

In addition to the present drawing, the Crocker owns a small watercolor of a frog, only recently re-attributed to van Schrieck. The Froglet and the Morning-Glory were once mounted together, along with several watercolor studies of insects by other artists.(7) The presence of similar watercolors and drawings in Schrieck’s inventory (“een party teeckeningen wesende Schetsen soo van bloemen, kruyden als anders”) indicates that he made other such sketches.(8) Additionally, he made watercolor studies of plants for the famous plant collector and gardener Agneta Block, who built up a collection of about four hundred botanical studies recording her specimens.(9) Although the Crocker drawing is not listed in her inventory, Douglas Hildebrecht notes that several of Schrieck’s watercolors for Block survive in the collection of the Earl of Derby, including a bindweed (a wild type of morning glory) with caterpillar and chrysalis.(10) The summary treatment of the plant in this watercolor diverges from the more carefully descriptive botanical illustrations by other artists that comprised most of Block’s collection. If the Crocker sheet was not intended for the collection of a horticulturalist, it attests to the burgeoning interest in natural history in seventeenth-century Europe.

Stacey Sell, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010