The Butterfly Art of Vladimir Nabokov: A Love Story

by Stephen J. Gertz

Vladimir Nabokov

The last substantial group of books and manuscripts to come directly from Vladimir Nabokov's family,  scheduled to sell at auction on Monday, June 13, 2011 by Christie's, has been sold en bloc prior to the auction by private treaty to an important collector.  The price paid was over $730,000.

Most of the volumes were inscribed by Nabokov to his wife, Vera, and son, Dimitri. Books inscribed by Nabokov are much rarer than the quantity in this collection might suggest. Nabokov never signed books for strangers, and inscriptions to friends and relatives are few.

In addition to the books, Nabokov's writing desk, typewriters, and butterfly net were part of the collection.

Butterfly net?

Vladimir Nabokov was totally consumed by two passions: literature and lepidoptery. He adored butterflies, and routinely adorned copies of his books with drawings of them, particularly those given to Vera. She, like Vladimir, treasured nature, art, and life's other intangibles, more highly than material possessions and Vladimir knew that for Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries, Vera  appreciated his thoughtful and delicate butterfly drawings much more than some trinket. She  delighted in these drawings in a way she never did for the landscapes he used to paint for her in earlier days.

Vera, whom the artist Saul Steinberg described as Nabokov's "gyroscope," was indispensable to Vladimir; for over fifty years she was his muse, reader, typist, chauffeur, chess partner, and much else. The books Vladimir gave to her she knew intimately; she had read and reread them in various forms and knew whole passages by heart. 

Nabokov valued the precision of language, the way a specific word can capture the exact shade of meaning or the color of an emotion. But his love for Vera  stretched the limit of language's ability to capture all things. Love struck him wordless and his butterfly drawings provided a way to manifest  his deep love for her, one that could not be expressed as neatly with words; language got in the way.

Nabokov disliked ineffective, syrupy, sentiment. Consider his butterfly drawings to Vera as mash-notes without the slop.

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All images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.

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Of related interest:

Ron Rosenbaum at Slate is Wrong About Nabokov's Pale Fire.

Human Butterflies Aflutter at Christie's.

Early American Butterflies Alight in South Carolina.

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Early American Butterflies Alight In South Carolina

by Nancy Mattoon

Watercolor Painting By John Abbot, c.1813.
Latin name: Papilio polyxenes (Fabricius)
English: Black Swallowtail

(All Images Courtesy of Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina.)

The Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina has digitized one of the earliest collections of original watercolor illustrations depicting the butterflies and moths of North America. The Abbot Watercolors Collection consists of 149 paintings of butterflies and moths, mounted and matted, and housed in six blue half morocco cases with gilt-lettered backs. The paintings were created by pioneering artist and naturalist, John Abbot (1751-1840), between 1813 and 1828.

Latin name: Danaus plexippus
English: Monarch

The London-born Abbot was one of the earliest Europeans to record the natural history of North America. Abbot was the son of a noted British barrister, and was expected to follow in his father's footsteps by taking up the law. But, as a boy, he developed a fascination with the animal kingdom, and showed an extraordinary artistic talent. Recognizing that his son had no interest in becoming a lawyer, Abbot's father hired French painter and engraver Jacob Bonneau to teach the boy the fundamentals of book illustration.

Latin name: Eumorpha pandorus
English: Pandorus Sphinx

Abbot's interest in natural history led to friendships with noted London ornithologists and entomologists. He began to collect insect and bird specimens, and made a modest living by selling paintings of them on commission. By 1770 he had earned enough respect to have two of his illustrations of Lepidoptera accepted for display in the London Society of Artists yearly exhibition. Around this same time, Abbot began to express an interest in traveling to North America to document the avian and butterfly species found in the New World.

Latin name: Hypercompe scribonia
English: Great Leopard Moth

John Abbot was fortunate to find a wealthy and influential mentor in London jeweler Dru Drury (1725-1803), an avid insect fancier, who ultimately accumulated one of the most comprehensive private collections of entomological specimens in the world. Drury not only purchased specimens collected overseas, but also funded expeditions throughout the world, with the express purpose of finding new species for his collection. The publication of Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-1743), the first printed account of the flora and fauna of North America, inspired Drury to send Abbot on a collecting trip to Virginia in 1773. Before leaving London, Abbot formed another business partnership with London jeweler John Francillon (1744-1816), who would act as his agent and sell his paintings to naturalists other than Drury.

Latin name: Hyalophora cecropia
English: Cecropia Silkmoth

Arriving in Virginia in the Fall of 1773, Abbot soon found that the chaos of the Revolutionary War made pursuing his work impossible. He relocated to Georgia within two years, where he remained until his death in 1840. His production of illustrations in the New World was amazingly prolific. He created over two thousand paintings for Francillon alone, many of which are now housed in The Natural History Museum of London. In 1797 Abbot’s drawings were published in The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia by Sir James Edward Smith (1759-1828). The two-volume work, one of the earliest butterfly guides to North America, included one hundred and four hand-colored engravings of Abbot’s paintings, along with Abbot’s notes and observations, written in both French and English.

Latin name: Eacles imperialis
English: Imperial Moth

The paintings in the collection of the Thomas Cooper Library were commissioned by American naturalist John Eatton Le Conte in 1813. Le Conte took the completed illustrations to Paris in 1828, where he began work with Jean Alphonse Boisduval on Histoire générale et iconographie des lépidoptères et des chenilles de l'Amerique septentrionale. Le Conte and Boisduval used some of the Abbot watercolors for the 1833 edition of this work.

Latin name: Citheronia regalis (Fabricius)
English: Royal Walnut Moth

According to the Thomas Cooper Library website, "Boisduval apparently gave the drawings to French lepidopterist Louis M.A. Depuiset (.pdf), who in turn gave them to Charles M. Oberthür, a former student of Boisduval. Four years after the death of Oberthür in 1924, a rare book dealer named La Chavalier purchased Oberthür’s library. The drawings were owned privately for the next thirty-nine years, and the identity of the owner(s) is not known." In November of 1963, Sotheby’s and Company of London sold the watercolors, listed only as 'property of a lady,' to the rare book firm H.P. Kraus of New York City. The University of South Carolina purchased the illustrations from H.P. Kraus in 1964 for the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

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