Jacques-Gérard Milbert (18 November 1766 – 5 June 1840) was a French naturalist and artist. Milbert was a pupil of the

landscape painter Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compos ...

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, and went on to teach drawing at the Parisian

school of mines A school of mines (or mining school) is an engineering school, often established in the 18th and 19th centuries, that originally focused on mining engineering and applied science. Most have been integrated within larger constructs such as minera ...

– the ' – from 1795. In 1800, Milbert embarked on

Nicolas Baudin Nicolas Thomas Baudin (; 17 February 1754 – 16 September 1803) was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer, most notable for his explorations in Australia and the southern Pacific. Biography Early career Born a comm ...

's voyage to Australia. During the voyage, Milbert and several other artists became ill, and the artists and the captain came into conflict. This caused several artists, including Milbert, to leave the voyage at Mauritius, leaving Charles-Alexandre Lesueur to produce the voyage's scientific drawings. Milbert returned to France, where in 1812 he published a series of views of

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

, the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...

and

Tenerife Tenerife (; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 43% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of and a population of 978,100 inhabitants as of Janu ...

, titled ', comprising two

octavo Octavo, a Latin word meaning "in eighth" or "for the eighth time", (abbreviated 8vo, 8º, or In-8) is a technical term describing the format of a book, which refers to the size of leaves produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multip ...

volumes of text, and one

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

volume of plates. In 1815, Milbert travelled to the United States, where he would remain for eight years, based in New York City, teaching, and travelling extensively in the northeastern United States. During his time there, he sent back 48 shipments of natural history specimens to the ' in Paris. Milbert returned to France on 20 October 1823, and began teaching, again at the school of mines. He published several further volumes, including drawings from his travels in the United States. He died on 5 June 1840. Milbert was awarded the ' and, after a campaign by scientists who had received his specimens, the government agreed to pay Milbert's widow a pension.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Milbert, Jacques Gerard 1766 births 1840 deaths 18th-century French painters French male painters 19th-century French painters French naturalists Recipients of the Legion of Honour 19th-century French male artists 18th-century French male artists