Ferdinand Bauer

Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826) was an Austrian botanical and natural history illustrator, born in Feldsberg in Moravia, now Valtice in the Czech Republic. In 1786 he travelled to Greece and Asia Minor as the artist of the Oxford professor John Sibthorp, returning in December 1787 with more than 1,500 sketches; these became the basis for the Flora Graeca, published from 1806. Joseph Banks then chose him as one of the six scientists on Matthew Flinders's voyage around Australia, where he served as botanical draughtsman under the botanist Robert Brown. He stayed on after Flinders left in 1803, visiting Norfolk Island and other places, and returned to England in 1805. His own Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae, issued from 1806 to 1813, was a commercial failure, and he supplied ten plates for Flinders's A Voyage to Terra Australis. Bauer returned to Vienna in 1814 and died there in March 1826. The plant genus Bauera and Cape Bauer in South Australia are named after him.