Early History

The history of art in Florida spans from the first European artist, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, who focused on maps and informational sketches, (1564), until the present day when art in Florida explodes into the modern forms and styles.  These range from the folk art of Purvis Young to the ultra high tech of 3Dpoetry.org.

 
For many years, few true artists came to Florida, as it was a rough frontier due to the swampy terrain and subtropical climate. Those early artists, who did come, however, were fascinated by Florida's Native lifestyles. Choosing to capture in realistic form, the life in Florida they saw. The artists who chose to portray the spectacular sunsets and sunrises, tropical forests hung with moss, and the unique flora and fauna, all came later in the early Florida paintings. A wide array of these artists and their paintings are written about here.

The early artists document the portrayals of early explorers and naturalists like Mark Catesby and John James Audubon, These two well known artists painted in a realist form that was two dimensional in style. Their subjects were nature and the Floridian natives.The next notable artist isGeorge Catlin who was strong on the native figure and natural events, forest fires and such. In the year 1712, Mark Catesby, an  artist-naturalist embarked on scientific expeditions to what were then the southern colonies of British North America that would ultimately result in the first major work on New World botanical and animal life,His book was titled; The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. His color plates were hand completed and focused on informational depictions. The elegant folio pages gave the Old World the first glimpse of the new. Carolus Linnaeus is reported to have used many of Catesby's drawing and actual specimens and much of his text for the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (1758) which lays the foundation of today's system of biological taxonomy.