Photos courtesy Hunt Institute, Carnegie Mellon University White Winter Pearmain Apple, hand-colored, chalk-style lithograph inscribed "Lith. & cold. by Amana Society, Amana, Iowa County, Iowa," attributed to Joseph and Gottlieb Prestele. Collection of Marcelee Konish. Click photo for larger image.

Art exhibitions have become more varied in their content in the past several decades. Following on the broadening of the contexts in which art can be examined and understood, organizers of shows have found subjects that lend themselves to a discursive treatment.

A case in point is the current show at CMU's Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, "Inspiration and Translation: Botanical and Horticultural Lithographs of Joseph Prestele and Sons."

Organized in collaboration with the National Agricultural Library, the exhibition is noteworthy for the variety of materials included. The wall texts and catalog take us further afield into a number of historical byways that are important elements in our cultural growth in the 19th century.

The basic substance of the show are the botanical drawings, lithographs and watercolors produced by Joseph Prestele (1796-1867) and his three sons. But even before we get very far into the pleasure of looking at these items, we are introduced to Prestele's remarkably full life.

A native of Bavaria, Prestele was active as a botanical renderer in Munich and Vienna. By the age of 16, he had produced a portfolio of watercolors after plants in the garden of the Bavarian Royal Academy. This was followed by groups of commissioned lithographs that appeared in some of the most ambitious German botanical works of the early 19th century.

Then, in 1836, the artist encountered Christian Metz, founder of a religious group known as the Inspirationists. In the following year, Prestele took his family and his great skills to the community's settlement in the Hessian town of Engelthal. A drawing giving us a view of the town, plausibly attributed to Prestele in the show, exhibits the delicate, incisive style associated with Nazarene artists, some of whom Prestele might have known in Munich.

Liriodendron tulipifera, Tulip Tree, chalk-style lithograph with pen-drawn dissection details printed by Joseph Prestele and hand-colored by a Prestele family member. Click photo for larger image.
Vitis bicolor, watercolor by William Henry Prestele intended for Thomas Volney Munson's late-19th-century monograph on the native species of Vitis. Click photo for larger image.

From Europe to New York

From being an important figure in German botanical circles, Prestele became a leader of the sect's congregation, without abandoning his artistic activity. His commitment to his new faith was demonstrated when in 1843 the entire family moved to a new settlement, Ebenezer, N.Y., near Buffalo. It was there that Prestele formed a life-long association with the nursery business, at that time largely based in upstate New York. Many of his and his sons' renderings of plants were to serve as catalog illustrations (see the numerous depictions of fruit, above all of apples in the show). The occasional shift from scientific to commercial depictions in no way cost Prestele his reputation among American botanists.

Prestele collaborated in some of the most prestigious American publication of plants.

He worked for Asa Gray, the foremost botanist in the country of that day, and produced a number of hand-tinted lithographic plates for Gray's unfinished opus on the forest trees of North America. The show displays several of these strong, meticulous sheets, and sometimes we are given the opportunity to examine, side by side, uncolored and colored versions of the same plate. Perhaps even better, we can ponder over one of the actual lithographic stones and marvel at the microscopic precision of the drawing.

Through Gray, Prestele met and subsequently worked for other influential figures in his field, including James Vick, editor of the important journal, The Horticulturist. It was by way of working on Gray's treatise that he also encountered Isaac Sprague whose brilliant watercolor renderings were translated by Prestele into the lithographic technique necessary for multiple impressions.

"Inspiration and Translation: Botanical and Horticultural Lithographs of Joseph Prestele and Sons" When and where: "Inspiration" runs through Dec. 22 on the fifth floor of the Hunt Library building, Carnegie Mellon University. Hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Institute will be closed December 16. Information: A catalog containing a number of useful essays and color illustrations of material in the show is available for $18. Call 412-268-2434 or visit http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu.

The show presents us with Sprague's own watercolor of the Magnolia auriculata side by side with an impression of Prestele's lithograph, printed in pale green ink, and his own hand-colored version. In our age of effortless image making, these three sheets are painfully humbling.

Moves to Amana community

Once again, in 1858, Prestele's faith uprooted the family, minus several of his mature sons, to the newly established Amana settlement in Iowa. Again there was some restraint on his work, although this time it took the form of publishing anonymous prints credited only to the Amana Society.

Just prior to that move, Prestele had produced lithographs of drawings created by teams of artists documenting portions of the Far West and Southwest for the Army and its exploration for feasible railroad routes.

At Amana, Prestele turned out devotional prints that were circulated through the community, and from the evidence in the households of the surviving Amana Community, his prints of fruit and flowers were also popular household decorations among his fellow settlers. All the members of the family at one time or another participated in what amounted to a cottage industry. The three sons all enjoyed some degree of independent activity as artist/illustrators, but it was William Henry Prestele who most ably continued his father's enterprise. In 1887, he was appointed the first illustrator in the new Division of Pomology in the Department of Agriculture, an indication of the maturing awareness of the government's essential role in scientifically furthering commerce.

William Henry's chef d'oeuvre was the many renderings of native grapes for the unrealized monograph on the subject intended by Thomas Volney Munson, a typically obsessed 19th-century botanist and champion of indigenous flora. The latest of these sheets is dated to within 15 months of his death in 1895, at a time when new methods of capturing images and transferring them to paper were rapidly rendering his tremendous skill obsolete.

The multiple, complex overlays of this show are enhanced for us in southwestern Pennsylvania by virtue of the residence not far to the east of Pittsburgh of Marcelee Konish, great-great-great-granddaughter of Joseph Prestele. She is in the happy situation of having inherited a great many of her illustrious ancestors' works, including a group of account books that opens yet another window on this extraordinary concatenation of art, science, faith and horticulture in Victorian America.