Scientist of the Day - Isaac Sprague

Yellow red poll warbler, watercolor by Isaac Spague, undated, with penciled comment by John James Audubon, Boston Athenaeum (cdm.bostonathenaeum.org)

Isaac Sprague, an American painter of birds and plants, was born Sep. 5, 1811, in Hingham, Mass., on the south shore of Boston Harbor. We know little about his first 25 years, except that he was apprenticed to his uncle, who painted carriages. Somewhere in there Isaac taught himself to draw, for he was already quite proficient, and had regional recognition, when he entered the historical record in 1840.  John James Audubon, who was in Boston trying to drum up additional subscribers for his Birds of America, came calling at the Sprague family home in Hingham in 1840, wanting to meet this bird painter he had heard about. Isaac was not at home, so Audubon was shown a few of his watercolors instead, some of which Audubon annotated, perhaps hoping to inspire the young artist. Two of these survive, in the Boston Atheneum, one of which we show here (first image), a yellow redpoll warbler, with a penciled note, "First rate, altogeather [sic] [signed] J.J.A."

Portrait of Isaac Spague, photograph, unknown source and date (Wikimedia commons)

That must have been a treat for Isaac to come home to.  Audubon wrote in his diary that young Isaac was already much better than "Alex. Wilson," his longtime nemesis at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (see our posts on Alexander Wilson and George Ord.

Audubon did finally meet Isaac, for he invited him along on an expedition up the Missouri river in 1843.  Sprague sketched birds and landscapes, and Audubon used these in his own compositions, without acknowledgment, as was his custom.

Prunus serotina (black cherry) leaves in fall coloration, watercolor by Isaac Spague, undated, Boston Athenaeum (cdm.bostonathenaeum.org

Around this time, Sprague was introduced to Asa Gray at Harvard, a botanist who was about to flood the country with an abundance of manuals and textbooks on the plants of the United States, and who was looking for an illustrator.  He gave Isaac a try, liked what he saw, and hired him. We have a few of these handbooks in our library, and I show the title page of our copy of First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology (fourth image), mainly because Sprague got title-page billing, which was unusual for an illustrator whose name was not Audubon or Gould. The wood engravings are all simple line engravings, accurate (says Gray), but not glamorous, and we do not show any of those among our images.

Title page, First Lessons in Botany, by Asa Gray, crediting Isaac Sprague for the 300 wood engravings, 1859 (Linda Hall Library)

We will show an engraving that Sprague did for Gray and John Torrey, who wrote about the plants encountered on one of the Pacific Railroad expeditions, the one along the 32nd parallel, and who asked Sprague to illustrate their article. He provided 12 drawings, which became full-page engravings, uncolored, but strongly rendered; the one we reproduce shows a Salviastrum texanum (fifth image)

Salviastrum texanum, engraving after drawing by Isaac Sprague, illustrating “Report on the botany of the expedition,” by John Torrey and Asa Gary, in Report of Explorations for a Route for the Pacific Railroad, vol 2, by John W. Gunnison, 1855 (Linda Hall Library)

 Sprague was kept busy as a botanical and ornithological illustrator for the rest of his life (he died in 1895). He did some bird books in the 1880s with chromolithographs that are quite lovely, but we don't have any of those. He also illustrated a handsome book, Scenery of the White Mountains, by William Oakes, 1848, which contains landscapes, which was unusual for Sprague, but the images, large black-and-whtei lithographs,  are really nice. We do not own it either, which is too bad. Our Sprague holdings could stand to be improved.

Cedar waxwing on choke-cherry branch, watercolor by Isaac Spague, undated, Boston Athenaeum (cdm.bostonathenaeum.org)

There are collections of original Sprague watercolors at the Boston Athenaeum (which is the easiest to browse through), the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Hunt Botanical Institute in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, they are not usually on display, although every now and then, someone will mount an exhibition on botanical art, and then the Spragues come out. We need another one of those, soon.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.