Ludwig Becker was a freelance artist and naturalist, active in Melbourne in the 1850s, at the moment when the first scientific and artistic institutions came into being.
The sale of specimens and illustrative commissions from Ferdinand von Mueller at the Botanic Gardens and Frederick McCoy at the National Museum were an important part of his regular income.
A passionate man, Becker's letters and drawings, while beautifully observed, communicate a naive engagement with his subjects.
His excitement on finding a young seal in the shade of a tree near Punt Road was communicated in a hurriedly drafted letter to McCoy in the heat of a summer's day in 1859. The smell of eucalyptus and the buzz of cicadas is almost palpable.
'Young female Seal, caught alive, vis-a vis Wilhelmi's residence (Punt road, not far off from Gardner's Creek road, south) sitting under a tree in the morning yesterday week; it was lively and galloped alongside Wilhelmi, who was leading it home with a rope. The nearest point of the Yarra is distant say half-a-mile. It lived three hours after it was caught. If you will buy it, I think it would be the means of completing your observations on Seals.
... I think it is worth to be bought for the Museum, it being fresh enough for proper setting; but haste must be made with, otherwise the hot weather will spoil it. Wilhelmi skinned it already. I believe the specimen is fully worth the price paid for the old one.'
McCoy included this letter as a footnote when the illustrations were published, a full two decades after these observations were initially made, acknowledging 'the late clever observer and artist, Ludwig Becker'.
