Collection D'Orchidées

The Collection d’Orchidées (19th century) features 97 exquisite hand-colored illustrations by an unknown artist, housed in the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Each plate includes handwritten German descriptions on the back and taxonomy notes on the front.

The cataloguer noted that many of these illustrations also appeared in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, a prominent 19th-century botanical publication. It was common for artists of the time to draw inspiration from printed works, with some illustrations being reproduced in other publications without proper attribution.