This book presents a set of color illustrations known as BanksAE Florilegium, botanical drawings of plants collected by naturalists Joseph Banks and
Daniel Solander when they accompanied James Cook on his voyage around the world in the mid-18th century.
On board was the 25-year-old botanist, Joseph Banks, accompanied by a small team including a Swedish botanist, Dr
Daniel Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus, and a Scottish botanical artist, Sydney Parkinson.
Lay suggests a somewhat strained relationship with Joseph Banks, who largely funded this expedition on which he and
Daniel Solander sailed as naturalists.
Key images in the first part of the exhibition include a 1775 painting of Omai (with botanist and leading founder of the African Association, Sir Joseph Banks and naturalist, Dr
Daniel Solander) by the Welsh artist, William Parry.
The botanist Banks employed to collect and describe the plants collected on the voyage, with the plan of publishing a book on them, was
Daniel Solander (1736-1782).
One of his most famous students,
Daniel Solander, got a job at the British Museum and was subsequently employed by Joseph Banks to travel with him on Captain Cook's first voyage to the Pacific on the Endeavour, and together they collected many specimens of previously unknown plants.
The broader public, however, saw the new-found interest in botany as a source of satire, and
Daniel Solander was depicted as a 'simpling macaroni'--simpling being the gathering and study of medicinal plants.
The Swedish botanist
Daniel Solander had already died in 1782, but the lengthy description of T.
Entre ellos,
Daniel Solander y Anders Sparrman son conocidos por haber sido los naturalistas a bordo del primer y segundo viaje, respectivamente, de las expediciones alrededor del mundo del capitan James Cook, y por haber llevado a Europa plantas de Australia y del Pacifico Sur.