A butterfly with widespread wings appears to flutter upward in this black and white scraped drawing on waxed paper. A smaller butterfly with rounded wings is visible at the lower right, while a beetle crawls along the ground amidst various grasses, trees, and shrubs. James A. Porter’s daughter, Constance, recalls her father using the “head of a fine-pointed pen to etch the image” into the wax-coated paper. It is possible Porter made this drawing with his daughter, who would have been twelve years old at the time. Porter uses straight and curved lines of various thicknesses to create the pattern on the butterfly’s wings.
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Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution
