Vitis - Memoria
1906
Deep purple 'Memory' grapes hang heavily from a curling tendril in this precise botanical illustration, their dark skins speckled with tiny light dots. A single grape sits sliced open below the cluster, revealing the seeds inside—a classic scientific trick to show exactly what the fruit looks like on the inside. Handwritten notes at the bottom reveal its origins: collected in Whiteville, South Carolina, in September 1906 and painted by Elsie E. Lower. Lower was one of the talented artists hired by the USDA to document America's fruit varieties, creating thousands of these watercolors to help farmers identify the best crops before color photography was reliable.
- Technique
- Watercolor
- Material
- Paper
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