Two Autograph Letters Signed from the Oxford Professor of Fine Arts, Selwyn Image, to 'My dear Barnard' [Rev. P. M. Barnard?], regarding funghi and moths.

Author: 
Selwyn Image (1849-1930), Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University [Rev. Percy Mordaunt Barnard (1868-1941) of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, antiquarian bookseller]
Publication details: 
Both from 20 Fitzroy Street, W.; 12 and 17 August 1908.
£175.00
SKU: 11294

Both items good, on aged paper. Written in Image's distinctive calligraphic hand. Letter One (12 August 1908): 1 p, 12mo. The 'Galatheas' arrived the previous evening 'quite safe'. 'Fancy your being at The Warren as well as at Deal! The Warren [Folkestone] is famous for being stocked with good things. You are indeed in the very heart of the richest entomological country in England.' Letter Two (17 August 1908): 2 pp, 12mo. He is delighted with 'these beautiful ochroleuca, which arrived this afternoon quite safely'. He discusses the occurrence of a moth: 'In old days, when I was a boy, at Brighton I think we used to get sometimes between us half-a-dozen in a morning or afternoon search on the stems of centaurea nigra'. He also discusses the 'brown Geometers', which 'sounld like Eubolia mensuraria', 'a handsome creature', the 'grey Noctua with whitish thorax', and 'Pygmacola': 'The Footmen are not easy creatures to find, even when one is in the locality.' Image's entry in the Oxford DNB describes how 'He found his favourite motifs in Epping Forest, which he also frequented on moth-hunting expeditions, for he was an ardent entomologist and made a collection of British butterflies, exquisitely arranged and labelled, now in the Hope entomological collections at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History.'