Bryan Poole (1953-2022)

Bryan Poole has died age 69. He was one of those very rare people in the world of botanical art - a very fine printmaker and a renowned creator of contemporary aquatint etchings featuring botanical plants. He was a perennial and popular exhibitor of his prints at the RHS Chelsea Show.

Below you can find an appreciation of his timeline and records of his background, career development, techniques used to produce his fine art prints, exhibitions, awards, commissions and collections.

My photo of Bryan Poole with his aquatint etching of "Cynara cardunculus - Cardoon" at a Private View at the Jonathan Cooper Gallery in Chelsea (21 April 2015)

Biography

​Born in New Zealand on 2nd December 1953, he passed away on 19th December 2022, just after his 69th birthday, at his London home  after a long battle with cancer. (See Death Notice at the end of this post)

It's been announced that a Memorial Service is planned to celebrate his life and achievements.

"Bryan Poole follows in a long line of fine botanical illustrators. Unusually, he has the gift to be able to combine traditional methods of illustration and reproduction with a very modern approach to botanical art and design. His appealing and distinctive work adds hugely to the wide range of talent found amongst botanical artists today."
Dr Christopher Grey-Wilson

Despite his New Zealand heritage, after graduating in Politics and Economics at the University of Otago and with absolutely no training in art, Bryan came to London in the early 1980s and became a freelance botanical illustrator and printmaker in 1981. Latterly he lived in Hackney in East London where he had his print studio in a converted air raid shelter

Bryan Poole in his studio

When he came to London, he trained and worked (1980-1986) in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, under Dr Christopher Grey-Wilson, former editor of The Kew Magazine. 

Subsequently he worked on commissions with a number of different people and bodies - including Dr John Kress, a botanist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

He produced his contemporary botanical aquatint etchings using copperplates and the painstaking and meticulous intaglio ("in the cut") technique developed in Europe in the 16th century and "spit bite" aquatint techniques  (see Techniques below for an explanation of how he did this).

"I lived my life, independently, overseas and sang my own song  . . . It is not that I've neglected New Zealand in any shape, way or form but it is just that I can make a living in London. I could never have done international work, gone to Dominican Republic, met (Smithsonian botanist and curator) John Kress, gone to Nepal . . . I am in the centre of things in London."
Botanical artist Bryan Poole home for Central Otago exhibition

​Exhibitions
​

My first meeting with Bryan Poole - who was exhibiting his aquatint etchings at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2008

Bryan was probably best known to most people as a perennial exhibitor of his fine art botanical prints on a stand at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.  It's where I first met him - and became a big fan of his work.

An article by Ursula Buchan (Daily Telegraph 21 May 2008) identifies the print which can be seen on the bottom right of my photograph of him above.

Poole always shows his hand-coloured etchings at Chelsea and this year he has two pictures on display that are likely to cause something of a sensation. Each portrays the flower of a tropical heliconia species - just visible inside the enormous, gaudy, orange-red bracts - and the gorgeous purple-throated carib hummingbird (Eulampsis jugularis ). In one, the male bird is visiting Heliconia caribaea, in the other the female is buzzing round H. bihai. These pictures tell an amazing tale of co-evolution - or what scientists call "ecological causation of sexual dimorphism and co-adaptation
from Chelsea Flower Show 2008: A cut above the competition by Ursula Buchan, Daily Telegraph (21 May 2008)

Other achievements included

• He had a one person exhibition of his work at the Herbarium Library at Kew in 2000
• He exhibited in the 10th International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration (28th October 2001 - 28th February 2002) at the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh.
• He received a prestigious Gold Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society in 2007
• He was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2002 and promoted to Fellow in 2006. 

He was also a regular exhibitor at specific Print Fairs and Shows in London.

Recently Bryan exhibited his botanical etchings

• ​at Jonathan Cooper Gallery in 2015 - see the Catalogue of Work from Botanical Artists in the Collection of Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE
• in Central Otago in 2016 -  See Botanical artist Bryan Poole home for Central Otago exhibition
• as part of Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art (2019-20) the exhibition at Kew Gardens to celebrate the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art and 30 years of collecting 1,000+ artworks from all over the world - see Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #6: Australasian Artists​
• various other exhibitions of the Shirley Sherwood Collection at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens (e.g. see Curtain Call for "Exotica" at Kew - list of art and artists exhibited in 2019)
• a retrospective exhibition at the London Sketch Club - in association with a book about his work

In recent years, he and I both had problems with walking and standing. When meeting at Private Views at Kew, we used to shuffle around the exhibition using our walking sticks and often laid claim to the benches and sat next to one another during the speeches at the PVs.  

​I will miss him and his work. It was exceptional.

Bryan Poole at the Otago Exhibition in 2016

Technique
​

Poole's technique was described in detail in The Telegraph article in 2008. Although Bryan describes 'The Etching Process' on his website, I'm reproducing it below for posterity as it appears to be the only place where his approach to his work has ever been described in such detail.

Essentially it's the same process used by the famous botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) when he created fine art prints from his watercolours.

Poole is also notable for making a number of artworks using a landscape format - in order to capture the growth habit of a plant.

​First, Poole makes a linear drawing with an etching needle on to a copper plate through a resin resist, which is impervious to acid. Next, he immerses the plate in ferric chloride acid, which bites into the metal wherever the resist has been removed. After that, he uses complex and time-consuming aquatint and "spit bite" aquatint techniques to give a tonal effect, rather similar to a wash drawing. (The same techniques were used by the artists Redouté and Goya, among others). Final highlights are achieved by burnishing back into the surface of the plate in order to expose the linear structure of the design. This results in a highly textured image of great depth and surprising vitality.

Poole hand-colours the plate using a scrim or "poupée" dipped in seven different inks. It is then steel-faced, to protect the fine details from being worn away in the printing process. Finally, he puts the plate on to the bed of a 19th-century Rochat intaglio press, places moistened, acid-free paper on top of it, then turns a wheel (a task that requires all his physical strength) to press down on the paper. When dry, the print is hand-finished, using watercolours.

For me, the most remarkable aspect of intaglio is that the copperplate is etched back to front; Poole must therefore have an exact mental image of the finished picture before he even begins. The prints are limited to 100; after that, even a steel-faced plate will lose its sharpness.
​
Chelsea Flower Show 2008: A cut above the competition by Ursula Buchan, Daily Telegraph (21 May 2008)
(Reproduced on Bryan's website)

Silver tree fern 2007 Cyathea dealbata by Bryan Poole

Clients and Collections

His clients for commissions included: 

• The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF),
• The Natural History Museum
• Dr John Kress, a botanist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington
• the McMillan Press Publications for the Royal Horticultural Society
• The British Homeopathic Journal.​

Portfolio sets of his prints of Native Plants of New Zealand can be found in the collections of:

• The Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation, Pittsburgh, USA
• The Natural History Museum , London
• Royal Botanic Gardens - Kew, London
• the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand
• Otago University's Hocken Library Archives Folio of Ten New Zealand Botanical Prints, 1998
• Southland Museum & Art Gallery, Invercargill
• Ralph Hotere Collection, Dunedin
• The Tokyo News Agency, Tokyo
• P&O Superliner AURORA (Southampton)

Various of his prints are also included in various other collections around the world:

• the Shirley Sherwood Collection.
• the University of Auckland Collection
• the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC
• Tokyo News Agency, Tokyo

Books
​

A book about his work, Contemporary Botanical Aquatint Etchings by David F. Marks, which included 100 plates of his etchings was published in October 2011 but sadly this is out of print and is no longer available.  

​His work was also included in Plant: Exploring the Botanical World (page 163; Phaidron, 2016).

In 2019, "Bryan Poole Botanical Artist" (26.2 × 21 × 1.9 cm; 0.92kg) was published in association with his retrospective exhibition at the London Sketch Club. This is also out of print and appears to be unavailable - which is a great pity.

Published 2011

Published 2019

REFERENCE:

POOLE, Bryan Mark. Born December 02, 1953. Passed away on December 19, 2022. Died peacefully at his home in London following a tenacious battle with cancer. Loved son of the late Naigre Joyce Poole (nee Thomson) and the late Harold Arthur Poole, and loved stepson of the late Joan Poole. Loved Husband and father of Diana Wheeler and Helena Poole, loved brother of Tony, Gillian and John, loved Brother In Law of Debi Lawry and Murray Cameron, and loved Uncle of Alexander and Courtney. A memorial function to celebrate Bryan's life and achievements will be held at a future date. Messages c/o [email protected]
Death Notice Published by The New Zealand Herald on Dec. 24, 2022