Passion Flower

Born in Nuremberg, Barbara Regina Dietzch (1706-1783) was Dietzch was the daughter of Johann Dietzsch Israel, a renowned painter, draftsman and etcher in his own right. Barbara discovered her artistic skills as a young child studying and practicing in her fathers workshop and she developed a technique of watercolor over gold leaf on vellum that had never been attempted before. Barbara had a considerable influence over many still life natural history artists of the period and her watercolors were strongly collected during her lifetime by her fellow artists. The rich, dark backgrounds of her paintings give a dimensional quality to the finely detailed forms of the botanicals and their subtle coloring.