Wallace House State Historic Site is the backdrop to this sunset screening of The Colonial Naturalist, a 1965 educational film from Colonial Williamsburg.
The Colonial Naturalist dramatizes English naturalist Mark Catesby’s travels in Virginia in the 1710s and 1720s as he studies and depicts the unique birds and wildlife of America. This vintage film from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Archive Series renders the birds and wildlife of Virginia in lush detail. Our historian begins the screening with brief remarks on the contested study of nature in the eighteenth century and Catesby’s work as a forerunner of later artists and ornithologists including John James Audubon and New Jersey’s Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh.
Bring your own lawn chairs or blankets for this outdoor film screening. Consider bug spray. The movie runs about one hour.
Learn more about Mark Catesby from Colonial Williamsburg’s Past & Present Podcast. Complement this program with visits to In Nature’s Realm: The Art of Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh on exhibit at Morven Museum & Garden, Princeton now through January 9, 2022 and Fine Feathered Friends: Birds as Mainstay and Muse on exhibit at New Jersey State Museum, Trenton.
🌊 #OperationJerseySummer 🌳 #NJStateParks
