Fig; Medlar
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Fig; Medlar” now? Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not on view at present. Checked September 25, 2026.
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the work
Jacques Le Moyne De Morgues (1533?-1588) was a French painter, illustrator and explorer. He also worked in London and accompanied the explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) on his expeditions to Florida in North America. This is one of 59 watercolours of fruit and flowers that Le Moyne de Morgues painted on 33 sheets. We do not know exactly when he painted them, but there are some clues. The watermark in the paper is the same as that used in Paris and Arras in 1568, and the binding is French. It therefore seems likely that they date from the period between 1568 and 1572. This is when Le Moyne fled to England with other Huguenots (French Protestants) to escape religious persecution in France.
Read on
The watercolours were originally in a fine tooled-leather binding dating to the late 16th century. Curators identified the watercolours as the work of Le Moyne in 1922. They removed them from the binding and mounted them individually. (The binding is in the collection of the National Art Library at the V&A.)
In the 16th century botanical illustrators revived the practice of working from real plants. Here the degree of naturalistic detail in the representation of the fig suggests that Le Moyne was studying a living plant rather than earlier botanical illustrations.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Details
- Accession number
- AM.3267V-1856
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
