Wilhelm Heinrich Prestele (or William Henry Prestele) (13 October 1838 – 16 August 1895) was a botanical artist known for his lithographs and watercolor work commissioned by the
US Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...
.
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Biography
Prestele was born on October 13, 1838, in Hesse-Darmstadt
The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt (german: Landgrafschaft Hessen-Darmstadt) was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by a younger branch of the House of Hesse. It was formed in 1567 following the division of the Landgraviate of Hesse betwee ...
, Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, to Franz Joseph Martin Prestele and Karoline Russ. The family emigrated to America in 1843, settling first in New York and later in the Amana Colonies
The Amana Colonies are seven villages on located in Iowa County in east-central Iowa, United States: Amana (or Main Amana, German: ''Haupt-Amana''), East Amana, High Amana, Middle Amana, South Amana, West Amana, and Homestead. The villages ...
in Iowa
Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...
.[ His father, known in America as Joseph Prestele, was also a painter and lithographer of flowers and fruits and prior to emigrating had been head gardener for King ]Ludwig I of Bavaria
en, Louis Charles Augustus
, image = Joseph Karl Stieler - King Ludwig I in his Coronation Robes - WGA21796.jpg
, caption = Portrait by Joseph Stieler, 1825
, succession=King of Bavaria
, reign =
, coronation ...
as well as a staff artist for a time at the Royal Botanical Garden in Munich.[ From his father he learned the arts of watercolor and lithography.][
In the late 1850s, Prestele moved to New York, and in 1861 he joined the Union Army as a private in a regiment of New York volunteers. He was wounded at the battle of ]Antietam
The Battle of Antietam (), or Battle of Sharpsburg particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union G ...
in 1862 and spent the remainder of his service period recovering in hospital.[ Sometime around 1863, he married an Irish woman named Anne, and with her he had three children—Margaret (1864), Frances (ca. 1869), and Emma (1870)—before Anne died in 1871 or 1872.][
In 1867, at the age of 29, William was hired to make a series of nurserymen's plates by Illinois nursery owner Franklin Kelsey Phoenix. He moved his family from New York to Bloomington, Illinois, for this project. No plates from this project are known to have survived, but a write-up in the August 1869 edition of ''Gardener's Monthly and Horticultural Advertiser'' praised them in robust terms: "We have now before us a fruit piece... prepared by W. H. Prestele. We are in the habit of admiring European art in this line, and have often wished Americans could successfully compete with it. We now have it here. We never saw anything of the kind better executed from any part of the world".][
When this relationship ended in 1871, William briefly went into business with L. B. Littlefield, publishing fruit and flower plates. In 1875, he moved his family to Iowa, not far from the Amana community where he was raised, and married his second wife, Susanna Gefaller.][ With Susanna, who died in 1882, he had a daughter, Lillian.][ He set up as a lithographer in Iowa City and practiced this trade for a decade or so.
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On August 1, 1887, he was appointed as the first artist on the staff of the recently formed Pomological Division of the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. He was assigned to make life-size watercolors of native grapes intended as illustrations for a monograph by Thomas Volney Munson
Thomas Volney Munson (September 26, 1843 – January 21, 1913), often referred to simply as T.V. Munson, was a horticulturist and breeder of grapes in Texas.
In 1888, Munson was the second American, after Thomas Edison, to be named a Chevalie ...
of Denison, Texas, a leading authority on native grapes.[ He worked from live and dried specimens sent to him by Munson, making color sketches of details that Munson would then review; Prestele would then use these detail drawings would to create a life-size painting of the species.][ The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture eventually decided the cost of printing the monograph with the illustrations would be prohibitive, so it was never published in its intended form, though Munson went on to use the text he wrote as the foundation for his highly regarded book ''Foundations of American Grape Culture''.][ Munson's book was illustrated with photographs instead of with Prestele's watercolors, which remained in the collection of the USDA.
Prestele's paintings are noted for their naturalness and attention to botanical accuracy.][ Over a hundred of his watercolors of grapes and other fruit are held in the National Agricultural Library's Pomological Watercolor Collection.
He died in Arlington, Virginia on August 16, 1895, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. A collection of his papers spanning the years 1887-1891 is held by the USDA National Agricultural Library Special Collections and comprises original watercolors and drawings, plant specimens, and other materials, including work related to the planned Munson monograph.][
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Further reading
* Munson, Thomas Volney. ''Foundations of American Grape Culture''. New York: Orange Judd Company, c. 1909.
* van Ravenswaay, Charles. ''Drawn From Nature: The Botanical Art of Joseph Prestele and His Sons''. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. 1984.
References
External links
Papers of Wilhelm Heinrich (William Henry) Prestele
NAL USDA Pomological Watercolors
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prestele, William Henry
German emigrants to the United States
Scientific illustrators
1838 births
1895 deaths
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
19th-century male artists
19th-century American botanists