Epistemology, techniques, and artisanal knowledge

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is usually considered hostile toward color in the visual arts, famously claiming that in contrast with paintings, uncolored engravings “leave something to the imagination […] and it seems that I thus see objects as they are in Nature”. This position certainly coheres with the primary-secondary qualities distinction propounded by philosophers such as Locke, which was represented in botany by Linné’s exclusion of color as a classificatory character. However, while endorsing Linné’s position, Rousseau colors plant engravings (none of which are extant) and valorizes the colors of plants in herbarium specimens and botanical illustrations. Arguably, this preference for the colored botanical image or specimen could be linked to its “nonart” (technical) status. Yet, it was perhaps also increasingly the case that Rousseau’s “laughing, but languishing, imagination” (Reveries, seventh promenade) could no longer accommodate “something [left] to the imagination”.