Both moth and tree were depicted by the scientific illustrators and naturalists the Scott sisters, Harriet (1830–1907) and Helena (1832–1910). Their book 'Australian Lepidoptera and their transformations' was published in 1864.
The father and co-author took possession of 2560 acres of prime land on the Hunter River estuary in 1827. Ash Island was seen as a 'paradise for naturalist'. For thousands of years the Worimi and Awabakal people had cultured this tidal wetland into a biodiversity hub. Alexander Walker Scott, an entomologist of the day invited other explorers, like Ludwig Leichhardt to his tropical place and even "offered to clear 10 acres in the district, construct a cottage and establish a vineyard for Leichhardt."(source). With time the usual degradation took place at the hands of settlers: subdividing, clearing, draining, agribusiness and finally industrial use of the landscape. In 1866, AW Scott went bankrupt and sold the Ash Island property. (source)
The young women had many years to depict 'paradise' and functioned as 'lady’ plant collectors to 'male experts' as was common in colonial days. "Their father’s bankruptcy forced the sisters to seek payment for their art and endure the perceived social shame for doing so." (source) Excluded from careers, universities and learned societies they continued to draw and paint Australian animals and wildflowers commercially till the end of their life. The artists were largely forgotten (in the land of pesticides) until there was an exhibition in 2011. (source)
One outstanding aspect of these 'amateur' naturalists was, that Harriet and Helena were drawing from live animals. "Most natural history illustrators of the time worked with long-dead, pinned specimens that were faded and lacked colour."(source) They refused the 'pinned' appearance of butterfly and moth cadavers and let them live. They also refused to depict 'the thing' in its decontextualised form. Like Maria Sibylla Merian before them they displayed the mutualistic symbiotic relationships between flora and fauna. The plants and the animals are shown at various stages of their cycles as an educational understanding of living creatures.
The scientific minds and the market demand an encyclopedic knowledge and repository for present and future disposability. Till today 'nature' is classified for the logistics warehouse of man. The 'thing' is still pinned, cut, tagged, frozen in vaults yearning for the self-made catastrophe. The bio-diversity of the ecosystem is reduced to a free service to humanity.
Removing a living organism from its larger environmental context in mind and practice allows for the reduction of life into mere stuff, living beings become mere material for one species' industriousness or the collector's wunderkammer.
The 'thing', once removed from its habitat/ biome can be utilised or exterminated by us and we can remain in proud denial about the basis of our life being pulled from under our (and others) feet.
It is also popular to have individual bird sound repositories for example. The 'thing' is without it's home habitat. The soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause: " is interested in a given habitat’s entire soundscape—its “biophony”—(he) finds the single-species paradigm absurd...each living organism in a biome evolves in situ to find its own acoustic niche, based either on frequency or time, so that “their utterances are not buried by other signals.” Thus, each animal sound, plus the sounds of the wind in the trees, or waves on a beach, fit together like pieces of a puzzle to create the kaleidoscopic composition we hear. According to this theory, animals change their sounds when their habitat changes." (source)
A perception and depiction of the whole in situ could contribute to the continuing existence of the web of life.
Today Ash Island is part of Hunter Wetlands National Park.
Images:
Cerura australis
Detail of hand coloured lithograph by Harriet Scott from A.W. Scott, “Australian Lepidoptera and their transformations drawn from the life”, London, 1864
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