The term nature study, in art, denotes a practice determined by direct visual contact between the drawer or painter and the natural subject. The creative act is determined by the interplay of eye and hand, with the aim of committing what is seen to the paper or canvas at hand (cf. fig. 1; Mimesis). Nature study is an expression of the early modern relation to nature (Nature, relation to), and is closely associated with the emergence of a pictorial culture that was indebted to visual experience in a particular way.