Add MS 5286

Watercolours of plants that grow around the Cape of Good Hope. The watercolours are executed on paper and pasted down on the folios of the album. Most drawings include an accompanying inscription in Latin: this is a cross-reference to James Petiver's Gazophylacii Naturae & Artis decas nonas (London, 1709). This is likely because the drawings in Add MS 5286 were used by Petiver as the basis for the illustrations in this specific volume from the multi-volume Gazophylacii Naturae & Artis. In the volume, Petiver explains that this contains 'figures of one hundred elegant plants, all growing about the Cape of Good Hope. And Copies from the original paintings taken from the living plants, viz those which the States of Amsterdam presented to the Right Reverend the Bishop of London, when his Lordship was at the Congress there A.D. 1691, with above fifty other painted from growing plants'.

In the catalogue of Sloane's Library, Sloane MS 3972 C, Add MS 5286 is described as 'A volume of Plants growing about the Cape of good Hope, among which are the Copies of the original paintings, which the states of Amsterdam presented to Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, when he was at the Congress there in 1691.' The drawings of plants in Add MS 5286 may therefore be copies commissioned by Petiver after the set of drawings owned by Henry Compton, rather than Compton's 'original' set.

The drawings of South African plants owned by Compton and the copies thereof in Add MS 5286 are not unique. There are various other manuscripts in collections in Germany, South Africa and Ireland with the same set of drawings of plants, all attributed to the German pharmacist Hendrik Claudius, who was employed by the Dutch East India Company as botanical illustrator. The drawings are related to the expedition to Namaqualand in search of copper organised by Simon van der Stel, Dutch Governor based at the Cape of Good Hope, in 1685. The better-known version of this set of drawings is in a manuscript in Trinity College Dublin (TCD MS 984) containing Van der Stel's report on the expedition in search of copper along with a set of watercolours of animals and plants from the Cape of Good Hope, of which the plants depicted in Add MS 5286 are copies. A facsimile of the complete Trinity College set, including both animals and plants from the Cape of Good Hope, was published in Gilbert Waterhouse, ed., Simon van der Stel's Journal of his expedition to Namaqualand 1685-6, edited from the manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin (London: Longmans Green and co., 1932).

In another album from Sloane's collection, Sloane MS 4015 (ff. 34-49), are the drawings of animals from the Cape of Good Hope, likely by the hand of Hendrik Claudius, rather than copies after them.