Jacques le Moyne de Morgues (French, ca. 1533-1588). Sweet Violet and butterfly.

JACQUES LE MOYNE DE MORGUES (FRENCH, CA. 1533-1588)f.2: Sweet Violet and butterflyWatercolor and gouache on paper prepared as vellumca. 1565Paper size: 7 1/2 x 5 5/8 inFrame size: 16 1/4 x 14 1/4 inProvenance: DuMarry (from the inscription on the frontispiece) The extraordinary career and oeuvre of the Huguenot artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues have only relatively recently been defined and described (see Paul Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida, and England, 2 vols., London, 1977).  The varied circumstances of his artistic production must surely be unique in the history of art; although large periods of his career are undocumented, he appears to have worked as a court artist in France, under Charles IX, is known to have traveled to Florida in 1564, as official artist and cartographer to the ill-fated French attempt to establish a colony there, and to have ended his career as a highly regarded botanical artist in Elizabethan Lon