NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

The real woman behind this website

17/7/2022

I got into botanical art because of my mother. The fact that this website exists starts with her.

Every year when I was young, Mummy always ordered an RHS Desk Diary. These had botanical illustrations at periodic intervals throughout the year. We were both intrigued by them and loved the illustrations of flowers, fruit and vegetables- particularly those by Redoute. Every year I looked forward to seeing her new one to see what new pleasures would be inside. Over time, once the diary was finished, plates were removed and inserted into frames and hung on the wall.

She also enjoyed art and I remember artwork she did for her local Women's Institute involving plants from every season. She was also very encouraging about my own artistic endeavours.

Then there was her love of plants and gardening and visiting gardens. As an adult, I lived in London and she continued to live in Cheshire. Most of my visits to her involved very long visits to plant centres, planting the garden and even longer visits to various gardens near her home in Cheshire. Latterly, as we both became less mobile together, we became very appreciative of gardens on the level - and rollators!

Nowadays I'm rather less mobile and mother (in her late seventies) is even less so. For those who like visiting gardens but have difficulty walking, Tatton is an excellent place to visit as it provides electric wheelchairs of the sort you see many older people now using to do their shopping. Mother whizzed around gravel paths and on and off grassy banks in one - she even managed the steep slope at the side of the Italian gardens! Fortunately I managed to persuade her to sharpen all my pencils for me before she started getting too ambitious!
Sketches from Tatton Park (June 2007) | Travels with a Sketchbook

I liked the way she always called plants by their correct Latin names and I now wander around gardens and identify plants as I go with names which just pop into my head. My knowledge of most of them can only come from listening to her over very many years.

As she became older and more arthritic, we devised new ways to garden at her home to take account of her mobility. I ran around uprooting weeds, pruning and generally licking the garden into better shape while she she sat in one spot filling the garden rubbish bin and making me cups of tea!

I saw her in June and spent some of my time moving all her big plant pots around so she had the best view of all the plants which were blooming just beyond the huge sliding windows which provided her with such an excellent view of her garden.

(She was tickled pink when my sketch of her garden (see below) was given the double page spread introducing section 2 "Deciding what to draw" in my book about sketching!)

A Cheshire Garden in July 2011 pen and ink and coloured pencil on Arches, 10" x 14" copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The Top 10 Botanical Artists & Illustrators

30/12/2019

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The 10 most popular botanical artists and botanical illustrators from the past - with dedicated pages on my website - are ranked and listed below.

To date the 18th and 20th centuries are doing very well. The spread across the centuries is as follows:

1600s: 1
1700s: 3
1800s: 2
1900s: 4

It's very interesting that the top three female botanical artists are all people that I would think of as being part of the great "exploration" heritage of botanical art. They used their own initiative to decide where to go, what to paint and how to present it in terms of contemporary ways of exhibiting and publicising their work.

Some food for thought maybe as people compile their "to do" lists for next year?

Links to the dedicated web pages for each artist are embedded in the names of the botanical artists listed below. The ranked order is based on the Google Analytics data for my website for the last four years.

1. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 - 1717)
Her popularity is, in part, influenced by all the events and celebrations of her life generated by the 300th anniversary of her death in 2017. There was a lot of interest in her life during that period - and since.

2. Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 - 1840)
Probably one of the most popular botanical artists with the general public. Due in no small part to the considerable reproduction of his paintings for wall decorations. However his achievements in terms of "series" paintings were considerable and varied - particularly Les Liliacees (1802 - 15) and Les Roses (1817 - 21). He also has the unique distinction of painting on commission for both Queen Marie Antoinette and the Empress Josephine Bonaparte!

3. Margaret Mee (1909 - 1998)
A lot of her paintings of plants in the Amazon Rainforest were exhibited in the "Brazil - a Powerhouse of Plants" exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens in 2016. Her focus on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest has also seen her much referenced in recent times

4. Marianne North (1830 - 1890)
There are not many artists who can say they've travelled to and painted plants in

North and Central America: the USA, Canada, Jamaica and the Caribbean,
South America - Brazil and Chile.
Europe - Tenerife
Asia - Japan, Singapore, Sarawak, Java, Sri Lanka, India,
Australasia - Australia, New Zealand,
Africa - South Africa and the Seychelles

I think this botanical artist enjoys a lot of fame due to having her very own gallery at Kew. If you want to make sure your botanical art continues to be seen after your are no longer around, it's a great idea to build a dedicated art gallery to do just that! Plus her artwork is unique and well remembered once seen for how it is hung in the Marianne North Gallery.

5. Rory McEwen (1932 - 1982)
Probably the best known and most popular of more recent contemporary artists. As 'The Colours of Reality' Retrospective Exhibition in 2013 at Kew demonstrated, this is an artist who has been a considerable influence on many of the most talented leading botanical artists of today

6. Elizabeth Blackwell (1707 - 1758)
A lady botanical artist with a fascinating backstory who painted plants growing in the Chelsea Physic Garden. Blackwell compiled and published her hand drawn, engraved and coloured "A Curious Herbal" (1737-1739) in order to raise funds to free her husband from debtors prison.

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7. Sydney Parkinson (1745 - 1771)
The botanical artist who sailed on the Endeavour, with Captain Cook, to South America, Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia - and died on the way back. He's well known in connection to the development of his drawings and paintings for Banks Florilegium.

8. Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770)
The leading botanical artist in Europe in 1750! This German born artist was a prodigious artist who produced an enormous number of high quality illustrations on commission for various botanical publications and plant collectors. He was one of the most influential botanical artists of all time due to his development of the Linnaean style of botanical illustration. He is also one of my favourites!

9. Arthur Harry Church (1865-1937)
A botanist who focused on the morphology and structure of plants and began to illustrate to demonstrate his findings. He has since earned a reputation as a scientific botanical illustrator of note.

10. Pandora Sellars (1936 - 2017)
The youngest of the botanical artists in this list and the one who died most recently. She is widely considered to be a contemporary equivalent to the botanical masters of the past and one of the top botanical painters of all time. Botanical Theatre: The Art of Pandora Sellars (1936-2017) - a retrospective exhibition of her paintings on display at Kew demonstrated that for those who were fortunate enough to be able to visit and see her work

Tomorrow - for the last blog post of the decade, I'll be reviewing the Top 20 Pages on my Botanical Art & Artists website based on the number of pageviews they've enjoyed since they were created.

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The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers by Susan Christopher-Coulson

1/12/2019

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About the Winter Banner for 2019/20

"The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers" by Susan Christopher-Coulson (Shirley Sherwood Collection) coloured pencil

The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers by Susan Christopher-Coulson - in a cropped format - is the new banner on the homepage of my website and my Botanical Art and Artists Facebook Page.

This is the first contemporary botanical image I've used since I created my website four and half years ago. There are two reasons for this change:

the routine one - I change the banner to try and suit the season every three months on the 1st December, 1st March, 1st June and 1st September.
Winter has always been a bit of a challenge - except when using images from the Southern Hemisphere!

However, I was very pleased to spot this image of "The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers" by Susan Christopher-Coulson when reviewing the artwork hung in the Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art exhibition at Kew. It seemed very appropriate to me to honour the exhibition in some way over these winter months. When I saw her at the private view I asked whether I could use the image for the winter banner for my website and she very kindly agreed.

About Susan Christopher Coulson

Susan Christopher Coulson at the PV for Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery - where "The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers" is currently hanging

Susan Christopher Coulson GM (1999) VPSBA is a very experienced botanical artist and teacher of botanical art whose chosen medium is coloured pencils.

Susan was born in Durham and trained as a fashion and textile designer, graduating with a degree in Fashion and Textiles from Kingston Polytechnic in 1977. She then lived in London for several years while working in the fashion industry as a designer / illustrator. She returned north with a young family and the subjects she drew began to change from fashion to plants.

The Botanical Artist

She'd become interested in the plant world while on country walks with her father during her childhood - which is also when drawing with coloured pencil also started as her preferred form of artistic expression. As an adult she expanded her techniques

She focused on developing drawings based on natural subjects, including botanical, and expanding her coloured pencil techniques, which have been her preferred medium since childhood. Their potential to create rich tonal depths as well as subtle transitions and translucent colours is a constant fascination as are the infinite possibilities offered by the botanical subjects, which she prefers to draw directly from live subjects.

Awards

Her work has received a variety of awards

She was awarded two Royal Horticultural Society gold medals in 1999 and 2001.
At annual exhibitions of both the Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Floral Painters (now defunct)

Collections and other notable information

Her artwork is in the Shirley Sherwood Collection, the RHS Lindley Library Collection and The Florilegium archive at Sheffield Botanical Gardens, as well as numerous private collections in the UK and abroad.
She has also produced commissions for a number of clients (and this is how to contact Susan if you're interested in commissioning her or asking her to teach)
Her artwork has also featured in a number of books about botanical art, notably those associated with the Society of Botanical Artists.
She was one of the two Vice Presidents of the Society of Botanical Artists between 2010 and 2018.
She continues to teach botanical art - using coloured pencils around the UK (see below)

Group of coloured pencil drawings by Susan Christopher Coulson exhibited at the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists in 2015. (top left) Cures from the Potager; (top right) Bean Counting: In Pursuit of Diversity; (bottom left ) Medieval Medicinals, from an Apothcary's Garden; (bottom right) Winter Greens: In pursuit of Form and Colour in the Winter Garden

The Teacher

Susan is a well known and experienced teacher of botanical art using coloured pencils.
Her Teaching page on her website details those venues in the UK where Susan will be teaching workshops. You'll also find her listed as both a teacher on my Teachers Page and her courses and workshops on my Courses Page for the UK

Susan Christopher Coulson demonstrating how to use coloured pencils for botanical art at the RHS Botanical Art Show in 2016

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Future Banners

In future, I'm minded to use more CONTEMPORARY botanical artwork for the seasonal banner image. If botanical artists want to contact me with suggestions as to appropriate images - whether their own or ones by other contemporary botanical artists - I'd be very happy to receive and consider all suggestions.

I have two constraints:

the artist must be listed on my website (or eligible to list on my website)
The image needs to lend itself to a panoramic format for the banner - via cropping if required - whatever format it is created in. So verticals in a portrait format with wide empty spaces either side won't work - but a landscape or square format with horizontals (such as in Winter Flowers) does work.

Obviously all contemporary botanical artwork is subject to copyright when used in this way and the artist must agree to the use of the image for a banner.

By way of credit I always create a link on the home page to the source of the image e.g. the artist's own website. (Try clicking the small image on the home page to see what I mean)

Do leave a comment below if you're interested in providing an image and/or would like to suggest a suitable image for future banners.

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Botanical Art and Artists: Summary of Contents

4/9/2019

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Botanical Art and Artists now has over 1,000 pages including blog posts. That's a LOT of content.

I've also been publishing some new pages (e.g. about Composition tips and techniques) without saying a lot about them as I tend to wait until they are rather more developed before formally announcing their existence.

One of those pages is one which acts as an INDEX to all the pages - excluding the blog posts - on Botanical Art and Artists. It summarises the content by broad topic and links to every page under that topic.

Melo vulgaris (Melon) from Volume 2 of the "Recueil des plantes dessinées et gravées par ordre du roi Louis XIV" - with plates organised by Nicholas Robert (1614-1685)

Think of the SUMMARY Page as being somewhat like a melon

a slice out of the whole is a Main Topic e.g. History
within that there are the very ordered sets of "seeds" - representing a number of much more specific topics e.g. 20th Century Botanical Artists
below that are yet more "seeds" - for one topic only e.g. About Rory McEwen (1932-1982)

If you take a look at the Index I think many of you may be

surprised how big the website actually is
find new topics you didn't know existed
observe that it has a Google Search facility which you can use when you cannot information that you want to know more about.

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I'm very conscious that this website will continue to grow over time. As such this page will be become more and more important over time.

It and the Home Page are also a good bookmarks to have if you want "one page for Botanical Art and Artists". Do please feel free to bookmark site either in your browser or on your website if you too have a resources section.

I hope you find the Index helpful - and that my "seed" webpages take you to new places and enhance your knowledge and awareness of botanical art and artists - both historical and contemporary

The banner image for the Index Page is from an engraving of Melo vulgaris (Melon) in Recueil des plantes dessinées et gravées par ordre du roi Louis XIV (Volume 2) - a collection of engravings of flowers and fruit. The contributors for the three volumes were:

Dodart, Denis, 1634-1707
Robert, Nicolas, 1614-1684 - organised the project and (I think) is responsible for plates in Volume 2
Bosse, Abraham, 1602-1676
Chastillon, Louis de, 1639-1734

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