Philippe Le Clerc (German, 1755-C. 1826)
A Magnolia Blossom on a Leafy Branch
Watercolor and gouache over graphite
Signed and dated lower left: 
“Ph. Le Clerc. Fex: 1791”
Paper size: Appox. 26 x 33 1/2 in.
Frame size: 32 1/2 x 40 in.

Drawing with watercolor and gouache over graphite, signed and dated lower left “Ph. Le Clere. fec: 1791”.
In excellent fresh condition, the green leaves and the yellow touches in the stamen of the flower unfaded.

Le Clerc studied in Mannheim and with Daniel Hien the animal painter. During the 1770s and for the balance of the decade, Le Clerc apparently abandoned his art and served in the military, probably for his eventual patron, Karl Il of Zweibrücken, by whom he was made Court Painter in 1781. The period during which he executed our watercolor, he apparently remained in Zweibrücken as Court Painter.

It is not clear where Le Clerc would have seen a flowering magnolia, but by the later 18’” century collections of plants, both living and preserved, had become a European cultural obsession. By the end of the 18th century there were no less than 1600 botanic gardens in Europe. Not only Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, but also Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe had become passionately interested in herbaria. Magnolia trees, native to North and South America, had been imported to become parts of exotic European botanical gardens.

The interest in grand depictions of flowers and plants would have been augmented by the new botanic gardens in German universities, such as the botanic gardens at Göttingen and Freiburg. The exotic character of our magnolia, enhanced by its over-life size, would have fascinated viewers. The taste for rare flowers had become a scientific and cultural subject of great interest. Not only were they eagerly collected, and, just as important for the art history of the period, drawings of these plants constituted a modern idea of the use of art in the depiction of the new study of botany.

The large size and dramatic composition of our magnolia represent a change from the simply descriptive character of earlier herbaria and the flower still-life paintings of the 17th century which usually emphasized flowers as part of a complex group of blooms, soon to wither and decay. Le Clerc emphasizes not only botanical details, but also the lush, pictorial potential of the flower, alone, boldly spreading across the sheet, with only the leaves to accompany it.

The magnolia becomes a visual drama, filled with life, freed from any sense of decay, as well as an anatomical image. Our magnolia represents a class of art-object which brought these vivid depictions out of the botanic gardens into the visual consciousness of a broader European audience