Part of a fictitious set of drawings from the Jussieu collection

1The 87 mycological plates by Claude Aubriet are kept in a portfolio of 475 drawings and vellums catalogued at the central library of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle under reference Ms92. There is no manuscript, essay, or treaty on botany that complements these illustrations. This fictitious set belonged to the Jussieu family and was sold in January 185854 to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (lot nbr. 3857) under the following title: “Aubriet and Miss de Basseporte. Large collection of drawings and paintings of plants. Gr. In-fol in a box”. It is described as follows: “Out of the 475 drawings that make up this beautiful collection, 192 might be preliminary sketches of vellums from the museum. A catalogue lists the names and numbers. All these drawings are organized by plant families. They are partly colored. Twelve paintings on vellum skin are included in this collection.” Listed in the catalogue of the central library of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle under reference Ms 92, where it is still kept today, the collection was started by Antoine de Jussieu. He asked Claude Aubriet and his studio to execute reproductions of vellums that were kept at the Bibliothèque royale, rue Vivienne, vellums that he had reclassified in part for abbot Bignon. Year after year, the scholar added to the collection with drawings made by various artists such as Madeleine Basseporte, la Contamine, Gerould du Pas, who was Claude Aubriet’s nephew, and various anonymous artists. Later bequeathed to Bernard de Jussieu and to Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, the collection was highly enriched until it was finally inventoried by the librarian Desnoyers in February 1858 after it was acquired by the Museum.

2The mycological plates thus represent part of a fictitious set of drawings gathered by the Jussieu family over the time period of almost a century. Most (69) are miniatures executed on paper with a size of 41 cm by 27 cm, dimensions which are very similar to those used for the vellums on natural history that were intended to be part of the Royal Collection. The others are drawings made with black chalk, pen and ink, and grey and colored wash drawing of several formats; only one fits the format that was used for the volumes of Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences (22 x 16cm), four of them measure 27 x 20cm, and twelve measure 35 x 23cm. The whole set of these tables are preserved in a persimmon folder located in the first of two portfolios under reference Ms 92. The first one contains the tables numbered from 1 to 244, and the second one contains those from 245 to 475. In between the plates signed “Aubriet pinxit” or “Aubriet fecit” are eleven plates which are not signed and which distinguish themselves from the others by a very different workmanship, page setting, and pictorial technique. These plates were done by an artist who is still unidentified to this day (it could have been Claude Aubriet’s nephew, who worked in his uncle’s studio in the 1730’s).

Non-documented numbering of the plates

3Each artwork was numbered by a number stamped with a hallmark at a date that is not documented by the central library of the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle. There is no numbering from the time of the Ancien Regime which was contemporaneous to when Aubriet executed the plates. Though a modern numbering was done by the offices of the central library, it probably reflects a much earlier filing of the plates.

4When Desnoyers inventoried the drawings included in the box, he started with the plates on mushrooms. He divided his list into eight sub-categories which were supposed to reflect the classification of the mycological collection at the time of the sale in 1858; there is nothing to prove that this classification was not the classification previously used by the Jussieu. He affixed the number of drawings by Aubriet and those that were not signed under the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H. The sub-category “A” is composed of “27 drawings signed by Aubriet, one dated from 1724, and 2 drawings without a signature” which have in common handwritten annotations by the same person, who remains anonymous. The sub-category “B” which included “45 drawings by Aubriet and 7 without a signature” was organized according to similar page layouts and because these plates represented gilled soft mushrooms. The sub-categories “C”, “D”, “E”, and “F” include one, two or three drawings that show isolated species such as the morels, the pezizas and the mushrooms with spines. These are also featured in the sub-category “G” comprised of 17 drawings by the artist and 2 anonymous on mushrooms that grow on wood. This organization of plates fits no classification rule, neither based on formats, nor on dates of creation, nor by alphabetical order of the species that were represented. The plates are preserved according to a scientifically arbitrary rule, using an embryonic classification system determined by mycological characters. But in this arbitrary classification, nothing is convincing and no mycological classification created by the Jussieu family (Antoine, Bernard or Antoine-Laurent) or by others (such as Tournefort) emerges with precision.

History of these plates

5These plates of mushrooms were commissioned to Claude Aubriet by the botanist Antoine de Jussieu who, in the years 1720-1730, became concerned that no mycological work of quality existed. Thus he decided to remedy this deficiency and in 1728, he published two articles in Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences. The first was “Of the need to conduct observations on the nature of mushrooms and description of the one that can be called Mushroom-Lichen”55 while the second was “Of the need to establish in the new classification system of plants a specific class for fungus, in which should be ordered, not only mushrooms and “agarics”, but also lichens. The opportunity is taken to describe a new species of mushroom that has a real smell of garlic”56. The history of mycology ignored Antoine de Jussieu’s work to create one single class under which to gather all lichens and mushrooms under the title of “fungus plants”. The botanist was faithful to the dominant concepts from Antiquity and the Renaissance which stated that a mushroom was a plant. He paid strong attention to illustration. Indeed, in his first article, Antoine de Jussieu cited the various works which contained figures of mushrooms: Clusius, Bauhin, Sterbeeck, Dillenius and Ray (flaying the work done by the English botanist because it did not contain any illustration). He also made reference to Tournefort’s works, to the description of Jean Joubert’s vellums on mushrooms, and to Sébastien Vaillant’s Botanicon Parisiense. Antoine de Jussieu proposed to write a mycological book based first on Father Barrelier’s illustrations that were kept in a manuscript titled “Fungorum gallicanorum descriptio et icones” (1663-1666) and, second, on drawings that represented species from the Paris area which he included in his book. Though he did not mention the name of Claude Aubriet, we know that the artist participated in Antoine de Jussieu’s project. The drawings in this current volume are proof of the collaboration. They were executed between 1723 and 1732. This was confirmed thanks to the dates that were affixed on nine drawings: The Polyporus squamosus on plate 91 was drawn at the end of April 1723; the Collybia confluens on plate 16 in 1724; the Peziza vesiculosa and the Calvatia utriformis of plate 26 in March 1727, as well as the Morchella esculenta on plate 81; the Boletus radicans was done in June 1728; then in 1732 the Coprinus picaceus of plate 30, the Bulgaria inquinans of plate 82, the Hericium erinaceus of plate 89 and the Lepista nuda (or sordida) as well as the Tremella mesenterica of plate 98. Of course, because of a lack of archival documents and more precise and detailed testimonies on Antoine de Jussieu’s mycological work, we cannot disregard the fact that Aubriet executed other drawings before and after the period of time that was established according to the dates indicated on the artworks. When Aubriet died, the plates were no longer in his possession. They were not listed in his post-mortem inventory. They were kept by Antoine de Jussieu or by Bernard de Jussieu, whom he had appointed as his will executor. They were then bequeathed to Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1936) who studied them and captioned some of them. We learn from a testimony by Antoine Nicolas Duchesne (1747-1827) in his “Description de deux champignons trouvés aux environs de Paris” in 177257, that the drawings were sometimes consulted. After Adrien de Jussieu’s death (1797-1853), Adolphe Brongniart (1801-1876), former director of the Museum in 1846/1847, General Inspector of Higher Education in Natural Sciences between 1852 and 1872, and Member of the Superior Council for Public Education between 1852 and 1856, wrote a letter in 1855 to the Minister in charge about the family Jussieu’s collections and gave a short list of the herbarium collection and a far more extended list of the “collections de dessins originaux [que l’]on doit remarquer.”58 Brongniart cited many drawings by Claude Aubriet, including those that Aubriet made for Antoine de Jussieu, which were later sold under number 3857 during the sale of the Jussieu’s scientific library starting on January 11, 1858 in Paris. The Museum national d’Histoire naturelle purchased these drawings and miniatures.

The plates: techniques and composition

6Whatever the paper format that Claude Aubriet used to execute the mycological plates, he always used the same artistic techniques: for the small-size plates (22 x 16cm and 27 x 20cm) and the medium-size ones (35 x 23 cm), he mostly used black chalk to sketch the shape of the species, then he used pen and black/color ink, grey or color wash painting. For the large-size plates (41 x 27cm), Aubriet used gouache more extensively, more or less diluted, and executed the outlines with pen and ink.

7Claude Aubriet first sketched his drawing with black chalk in order to delineate a coherent composition. Then, once the shape was outlined, he applied wash paint or gouache in nuanced shades uniformly, and created the volume, which he sometimes enhanced with small brush strokes to give more or less brightness to the drawing. The final touches were obtained by enhancing the outlines with pen and black ink (or sometimes color ink) which accentuated the formal specificity of the represented species.

8Aubriet framed the specimen with a double line done with pen and black ink. This frame was mostly used for large-size miniatures. For small or medium size drawings, he only used a single line with pen and black ink. In his mycological plates, Aubriet remained conservative in his layouts and basically displayed each species under three different angles: whole, whole showing below the cap, and in cross-section. The most essential aspect in the execution of these plates for Aubriet was the strict scientific execution of the specimen —rather than the aesthetic result-because the specimen would then be preserved forever by its illustration and would thus compensate for its loss and for an ephemeral existence in an herbarium.

Captions, proof of the scientific interest of these drawings for scholars, in particular for Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu

9Claude Aubriet’s drawings of mushrooms are complemented by two different kinds of captions: some contemporaneous to the time of the execution of these plates, and others far posterior, dating from the end of the 18th and 19th centuries.

10There is no handwritten caption written in pen and black ink and contemporaneous to the time of execution of these plates which could have given us the determination of the species of mushrooms that are represented. The only captions that date from the time of execution are annotations with black chalk located either on the front or the back of the miniatures and drawings.

11They give some or all of the following information:

12— They indicate the location where the species was picked, or the month when the mushroom can be picked or observed in situ in its natural habitat.

13According to the annotations on plates 1, 62, 66, and 78, the mushrooms can be seen “in September in Boulogne” or “in October in Boulogne”, the same is true for the species illustrated on sheets 29, 89, and 96. The species illustrated on plates 10 and 13 can be picked “in October in Versailles” and the one on plate 84 “in April in Vincennes”. Aubriet probably indicated with these annotations that the specimens he illustrated were collected in October or April in such or such herborizing location, either by himself or by someone else. These observations are precious though it is regrettable that the year of observation in situ of the illustrated specimens is only rarely indicated. They show that the artist must have had the knowledge of the seasons when mushrooms grow and where they grow the best.

14— They make reference to more artistic considerations so as not to forget some elements that were observed. Such annotations helped the artist meet his desire of faithful representation: information on the colors observed on the species to be represented, such as with the tricholoma with subradicant pointed stipe on plate 4 where Aubriet wrote in a corner that the “flesh [is] white”, on plate 8 where it says that the “mushroom [is] white”, or on plate 16 where it says that “the entire stipe is soil color”; annotations related to whether or not to paint them, such as in plate 5 where the word “paint” asks the question, or annotations related to enhancing the illustration with white, such as on plates 24, 55 and 61, where the word “glistening” makes us wonder whether Aubriet assigned the finish steps to the workers of his studio. We find such annotations on other pieces of his artwork, which demonstrates that the artist often used this method (cf. his botanical drawings from his trip to the Levant, in order to remember the colors of inflorescences as soon as the plants were dried in the herbarium, and as well on his drawings published in Antoine de Jussieu’s Histoire des plantes).

15— The artist tried to describe the specimen that was presented to him, as if he wanted to try his hand at a scholar’s description.

16These descriptions include information on the evolving colors of a mushroom depending on its level of maturation, like the puffball on plate 42; or they include comments on the smell like the caption for the Boletus radicans on plate 95, whose stinky smell is described as “the smell of a fly.”

17— They also give information on the scale used to represent the specimen on paper such as on plate 71 where Aubriet indicates about the Xerocomus sp. that “this mushroom [is] one time larger that this figure”, or as with the Marasmius rotula on plate 80 that is simultaneously described on the same plate as both “as is in nature” and also “enlarged”. The artist had already used this artistic method when he worked for Antoine de Jussieu’s “Histoire des plantes”. This mycological work is, in terms of artistic and technical practices, in the tradition of the other commissions that he executed for this scholar.

18The second kind of captions is very different from the annotations written with black chalk. They are exclusively related to the determination of the species that Aubriet illustrated for Antoine de Jussieu. These captions, of pure nomenclature value, are written on small vignettes affixed onto the drawings. These small vignettes were written by several authors at dates that could not be determined:

• The first author remains unidentified. He named the species that were illustrated on almost 24 plates. This anonymous person determined the species according to the reference book Herbier de France (1780-1795) by Pierre Bulliard, the research by the botanist Christian Hendrik Persoon, and Lamarck’s Flore Française (more specifically the third edition of the book, with Augustin Pyramus de Candolle).
• On the other hand, the second author is Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu. A comparison was made between the extensive captions written by the hand of the botanist and a botanical curriculum which included a catalogue of plants shown at the Royal Garden of Paris in 177259. Both handwritings are similar: small and firm handwriting, with well formed letters. This comparison confirms an annotation by Desnoyers written on the list that was prepared in February 1858.

19Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu studied carefully the collection commissioned and bequeathed by his uncle. He decided to name the species illustrated on 20 plates. He referred to the names given by Sébastien Vaillant in his Botanicon Parisiense (1727); to Micheli’s Nova genera plantatum (1729); to Linné’s Species plantarum (1753); to Adanson’s Plant families (1763-1764); to Albrecht von Haller’s Historia stirpium indigenarum Helvetia inchoata (1768); and to Persoon’s Mycologia Europea (1822-1828). Thus Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu referred to sources with and without illustrations of mushrooms, and of more or less reputable value in the history of mycology. He wrote very detailed captions only on the plates that represented known species that Aubriet had already illustrated, as, for example, in the Botanicon Parisiense (cf. plate 29). For his determinations, the botanist did a rather extensive compilation work on Claude Aubriet’s mycological plates. Yet, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu did not revolutionize the mycology scholarship, though he asked Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, as early as 1764, to organize herborizations at the garden of the Trianon in Versailles in order to collect mushroom specimens.

Scientific analysis of the collection by the mycologist of today

20We are expressing here a few general comments of scientific nature on the whole collection of Aubriet’s mycological plates. This collection, in the context of the time when it was created, is quite beautiful and rather impressive considering a historical point of view since many species were represented for the first time in color. Furthermore, this iconographic document magnificently expresses scholars’vision on mushrooms at the beginning of the 18th century. Their inclusion in the plant kingdom is perfectly illustrated by Aubriet’s plates.

21The one hundred and twenty three species of mushrooms painted by Aubriet are as interesting to study from an artistic point of view as from a mycological point of view, since they enable us to understand how an artist can approach the illustration of unusual naturalist objects without any precise knowledge.

22Aubriet knew the general shape and the physical aspect of mushrooms. Most of the mushrooms he observed were carpophores with a stem and a cap. The surface of the cap is usually only slightly differentiated and the underside of the cap usually features gills, sometimes tubes or spines. Aubriet did not make any mistake in the representation of these features. For the species that were out of this “agaricoid” standard, the illustration was equally rigorous; he did not try to explain the shape, but, rather, to illustrate it as faithfully as possible: the pezizas and cup-shaped puffballs, the helvels and the complex shaped morels, the “clavaria ramarias”, and, at last, the gasteromycetes are recognizable without any ambiguity or incoherence as far as their physical structure is concerned. Since Aubriet did not always have the opportunity to see the mushrooms in situ, he sometimes made the unfortunate mistake of positioning them in the wrong direction, “in console”: the beefsteak fungus and the tripe fungus are obviously illustrated upside down because the painter, while examining them, did not really look into understanding the use of the fertile surface.

23The layout of the specimens shows an obvious desire to present the mushroom from all angles: sideways, with the cap bent forward to show the top; laid down, to show the hymenophore, and in particular its bearing structure; in cross-section (almost systematic) to show the inside of the stem (hollow or tough). Furthermore, the changes of color by oxidation are shown–though only on one plate. The layout of the specimens looks amazingly similar to modern in situ photos like the ones featured, for example, in André Marchand’s “Champignons du Nord et du Midi” (1972-1995).

24Aware of the esthetic of his always very educative layout, Aubriet remained faithful to the ideas of the time about mushrooms; as with his contemporaries, Aubriet believed that the aerial part of the mushroom was a vegetative organ of a plant. Of course some progress had been made since the Middle-Ages; the mushroom was no longer considered as a mysterious organism that would have spouted out of the ground without any scientific explanation, it was now seen as a living organism that received its nutrients from substrate. Logically, the exploration of this substrate occurred through “roots”, which explains why half of the species were represented with a more or less developed root system, from a few hairs to more or less ramified capillary systems. We also find more sophisticated structures: adventive roots going up the stem when the stem is tapering upward; very thin roots delineated with a black line; aerial roots that are reminiscent of the roots of epiphyte plants; and, also, authentic thick rhizomorphs, cut sections reminiscent of arteries, and even enigmatic extensions of short dimension in a pointy shape. When no roots are represented, the mushroom appears attached to a schematized substrate: dead leaves, dead wood artistically symbolized by a log on the ground, a standing tree, or more precisely: a section of a branch, or an angular piece of wood. We can observe on plate 30 a unique association of these characters: a chip of wood at the end of which the stem of a Coprinus picaceus emerges from a stylized dead leaf, and from which a string of “roots” comes forth. In addition to the unique problem of “roots”, Aubriet had the most difficulty in representing the base of the mushrooms’ stem. Is it because he was only given broken specimens? Or, perhaps, because he did not consider this part worthy of interest? He compensated for this lack of observation with a rather stereotyped illustration: one of a clod or slab of earth, sometimes barely outlined, sometimes imitating a large deformed bulb, as Clusius did, to such extent that illustrations without this attribute are rare; thus most of the time, specimens are represented with the cut stem. We note here the only obvious incoherence in this collection of illustrations: the longitudinal cross-section shows a bulb surrounded with soil, whereas the exterior representations usually show a base covered with an overflowing clod. When the stem is really bulbous, the illustrator seems embarrassed. The volvas, which are found on amanitas, are represented as in “plants”: the illustration of the death cap exhibits overlapped scales as in a hyacinth bulb.

25But what about the representation of the caps? It is rather standard: often round, exceptionally ondulate, indented or scalloped. The center, sometimes cone-shaped or knobbed, sometimes more or less concave depending on the species, is delineated in an archetypal way: very often, whether it is knobbed or sunken, the cap is artificially ornamented with a strong shade or even a circular line around the center, sometimes even two. The transversal cross-section is what gives the most accurate information on the shape of the cap, and, also, sometimes contradicts the impression that the circles on the cap give. The surface is rarely explicitly delineated; when the species does not show a specifying character, the shades take over the faithful illustration of colors and patterns. Yet, we notice the beautiful scales of the lepiotas as well as the warts (though rather “caricatural”) of the amanitas. The shiny or viscid aspect seems to be exceptionally represented by white streaks positioned either in a circular or radial way. Aubriet illustrated very well the fertile structure of the mushroom, the hymenophore, though this part was only described in detail at the end of the 18th century. Several characters distinguish the hymenophore: its structure (gills, tubes, spines, etc.), its attachment to the stem (“free”, “adnate”, “indented”, “decurrent”), its density, and its depth. For the gilled mushrooms (two thirds of the plates), the gills are systematically drawn (in the painted specimens) forked, with perfect regularity. Yet, to the exception of the very rare kinds of fungi where the gills are really forked (in particular the Hygrophoropsis, which include the “false chanterelles”) or the few kinds in which the species only have large lamellaes (like the Russula), gilled mushrooms have gills intertwined with shorter lamellaes which do not reach the base. These systematic forks are not there at random; they are the deliberate choice of the author, maybe based on an analogy with the veins of plants. Gill attachment, discreet character that was not emphasized by his predecessors, curiously aroused Aubriet’s attention, and he strove to represent it in an educational way. The free gills of the amanitas, “agarics” and lepiotas are perfectly represented in the figures from below as well as in cross-sections. The notched varieties of various Tricholoma, Melanoleuca, etc. are not as distinctly represented, however the notch seems to be symbolized by a circular line around the stem; in some cases, the same line applies to decurrent gills. Aubriet is the only illustrator to have created and used this graphic invention; no prior or posterior author ever used this kind of representation. Decurrent gills are always perfectly illustrated, ending on the stem with a fine line, or slightly extended, usually in conformity with the real aspect of the species that are represented.

Mycological plates: supplement to the scientific observation and evidence of the transient characteristic of mushrooms in comparison to an herbarium

26When Antoine de Jussieu commissioned these plates of mushrooms to Claude Aubriet, he intended of course to use them to complete his mycological research work. He explicitly said so in his article published in Mémoires de l’Académie royale des Sciences in 1728: “There is already enough known species to put together this research book […] and this book requires that we not only feature the species that we can describe with precision and illustrate, but also that we present the observations absolutely necessary to the understanding of the physics of these kinds of Plants” (Jussieu 1728a, p. 270).

27During the century when these plates were owned by the Jussieus, they became part of the family’s iconographic collection that Antoine de Jussieu had started and that the whole family maintained, since all the family members were passionate about botany and natural history. As Jean-François Séguier implied in a letter he sent to his friend Pierre Baux on February 12, 1734, Antoine de Jussieu was an avid collector: “This gentleman has at home a book by Father Plumier on the plants of America in several volumes in-folio, all the compendiums on mushrooms that Father Barrelier did, a large number of other drawings of plants, and a cabinet filled with the most extensive collection by authors of botany” (Cordier & Pugnière 2006, p. 70). The inventory taken after Antoine de Jussieu’s death (sealed after death Mr. Le Boeuf de la Bret, notary, between May 6th and June 2nd, 1758, upon request of Bernard de Jussieu, will executor) makes it possible to know with precision the books on botany that were owned by the scholar: Horti medici amstelardamensis Plantae rariores et exoticae ad vivum incisae (1706) by Caspar Commelin, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des plantes by Denis Dodart, Historia plantarum by Matthias De Lobel, Elémens de botanique by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, and Voyage de l'Amérique by Father Labat. In addition to these books, Antoine de Jussieu owned a cabinet of curiosity on natural history that included shells, stones from China, seashells from Senegal, fossils, dried animals (sea horses), shark jaws, taxidermied birds, small fish, ambers, roots, porcelain, oysters and other marine animals, marine stones, snails, crabs and dried spiny lobsters, samples of marbles, various minerals, seeds, and fruits, all arranged in the drawers of different cabinets and completed with an herbarium of 70 sheets60. This collection was also connected to Claude Aubriet and many other artists’miniatures about natural history.

28Why did Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu study with such interest these plates of mushrooms made in various formats when he could have shown a stronger interest (for example) for the plates of aloes or of solanum? The scholar did not leave any testimony about his study of Claude Aubriet’s plates but the mere fact that he bothered to caption some sheets with much precision demonstrates how important these plates were, not for the scientific accuracy of the representation (as we already showed it), but rather for the compilation work of the various species of mushrooms that existed in the area of Paris.

29In time, kept as part of the eclectic collection of the Jussieu, the plates would have become a kind of herbarium in pictures showing the various species of mushrooms of Paris. For Denis Lamy, an herbarium can take different shapes, “from the traditional plate to the flasks, microscopic preparations, or watercolors” (Lamy 2005). Under this definition, we might believe that Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu used Aubriet’s plates as the plates of an herbarium. Furthermore, mushrooms are thus forever visible with all their characters, forgoing the difficulty involved in the preservation of mushrooms, which can lose their shape, their colors, and their smells. They were probably used by Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu as comparative plates. They could be consulted when a similar specimen, or a specimen that was thought to be of the same species, was collected. We know, for example, that Antoine-Nicholas Duchesne used this compendium61.