NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

New Year and a NEW page - about Pandora Sellars

1/1/2018

Today I created a BRAND NEW web page about Pandora Sellars (1936-2017)

I've been meaning to do this for some time and decided the NEW Year was a good time to start.

I say start, because this page (like the one for Rory McEwen) is going to take some time to develop to the level I'd like to get it to. Nevertheless I got a lot done today and I'm very pleased with how it looks on a desktop screen.

Pandora Sellars - and bluebells - in 2008 (Photo courtesy Sarah Neill)

It covers:

a summary about Pandora Sellars which explains why she is regarded as one of the best botanical painters ever.
a biographical timeline about her botanical art career and botanical paintings
a review of her botanical art practice - how she painted and why she is memorable (I'd love to hear more opinions about what made her special)
a list of exhibitions (a work in progress)
a list of individual paintings - (a work in progress) I'm developing this over time from various publications and databases. I aim to link these to sites where they can be seen online or viewed by appointment.
tributes following her death
articles and publications in which you can find out more about her and see his botanical paintings

At present the sections devoted to:

exhibitions
the list of paintings
publications

are all off to a good start - but I think they need a lot more work (and more research to identify the sources of data and then digging it out).

Let me know what you think.
Even better - do let me know if you have some information or images to share which are relevant to this page.

and finally....

I wish you and your botanical art and associated activities all the very best in 2018.

Subscribe to BAA News in 2018
Get every blog post emailed to you when you
Subscribe to Botanical Art & Artists - News by Email

0 Comments

Christmas Rose and Winter Aconite

25/12/2017

0 Comments

My very best wishes of the season to all botanical art fans and artists and the many readers of News about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists.

I've recently been reviewing the plants and flowers associated with this time of year. This post is a commentary on the painting below of a Christmas Rose and Winter Aconite by the renowned botanical artist Georg Dionysius Ehret (1707-1770)

Christmas rose and Winter Aconite by Georg Ehret

Botanical study, Christmas rose (Helleborus niger L.) and Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis (L.) Salisb.) by Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-70); watercolour and bodycolour on vellum; ca 1745; London © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This a painting of winter flowering plants, painted in watercolour with body colour on vellum by Georg Ehret in 1745. Underneath the script in ink states in Latin

HELLEBORUS niger, flore albo, etiam interdum valde rubente. F.B. / True Black Hellebore, or Christmas rose.

Translated this means "Helleborus niger, white flower, and sometimes very red"

The plants are both associated with winter and this time of year:

(right) True Black Hellebore or Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger L. ) with pink tinged white flowers
(left) the yellow Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis (L.) Salisb. -)

Interestingly both plants are poisonous. Hippocrates prescribed black hellebore as a purgative. Aconite contains cardiac glycosides which can stimulate the heart in small doses and can cause serious damage to the heart in larger doses

Unusually Ehret presents them both as growing in the ground. Even more unusual is the totally anachronistic and unseasonal peacock butterfly with brown and yellow markings. However it is still a strictly botanical illustration in terms of analysis and identification.

Ehret presents this subject as a growing plant rather than a cut or uprooted specimen. This mode of representation really belongs to the florilegia tradition, as does the unseasonal butterfly. But his illustration also includes everything necessary for botanical analysis and identification, with flowers shown from several angles and at different stages of opening.
Source: Victoria and Albert Museum
Location: Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E, case DP, shelf 2, box B

I've been pondering of late on trying to develop a kind of taxonomy of the different ways in which plants are illustrated e.g.

growing naturally in local habitat vs cut and cropped specimens
the whole plant - or just one aspect
the complete life cycle - or just one season
type of publication: the printed book or a single work of art
belonging to a florilegium or a book about one species or a book about native plants of a geographical area
timeline: ancient or modern
simple vs complex compositions
fill the page vs isolated within a space

I tend to think of artists as conforming to one type of illustration or another - and then you come across an illustration such as this one which rather confounds the typology.

I've been reviewing Ehret's paintings and it seems to me whereas most involved a cut flower or a plant with roots, paintings of plants growing in the ground are certainly not unknown. (A well known example is his painting of a Papaya Tree). It appears that they may have been painted in this way for particular collectors (eg Lord Derby) or for a particular book

In terms of a timeline, Ehret produced this painting in 1745

after his close association with Philip Miller of the Chelsea Physic Garden began in the late 1730s. It's therefore possible that these two plants were growing in the Physic Garden. Particularly since both plants were known to have medicinal uses.
after his marriage to Susanna Kennet - who was a sister of Miller's wife
just prior to his most famous publication appeared in 1748: 'Plantae et Papiliones Rariores' (Rare Plants and Butterflies) which was both engraved and hand-coloured by himself.

It seems likely therefore that this particular painting might be linked in some way to the development of Plantae et papiliones rariores ,which was published for subscribers plate by plate over a period of ten years, although this particular painting was not actually part of it in the end. It seems likely to me that the juxtaposition of winter flowering plants and a butterfly commonly seen in summer may have been judged to be stretching a point a little too far!

Ehret in the Victoria & Albert Collection

The original of this particular image can be seen, along with other images by Ehret, in the permanent Prints, Drawings and Paintings Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The search facility on the V&A website is more or less completely opaque and dysfunctional. (For some reason the web designers were enamoured with form over function and thought they'd update the website but forgot that people use it as a research tool. So we went from the old website which worked very well for research of the collections to the new one which is beyond irritating!)

You can request to view the image in person in the study rooms at the V&A. These are the

Guidelines for using the Galleries
Guidelines for using the Study Rooms (open to visitors 10am-5pm Tuesday to Friday)

How to order material
When making an advanced booking, you can request up to five objects/boxes of material. Please supply the museum number and location of the object(s) you wish to see when booking your appointment. This information can be found in individual object records in Search the Collections and the Prints and Drawings online catalogue.

I've found this image in two publications:

'Picturing Plants: an analytical history of botanical illustration' by Gill Saunders; published by Zwemmer in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum; 1995; no. 59, page 86 (illus.) - which presents a cropped version. My copy is the original 1995 edition. A second edition was published in 2009.
Ehret Flower Painter Extraordinary by Gerta Calmann published by Phaidon 1977. The image is a full plate (95) on page 144 in a large book and is reproduced very well. Calmann identifies it as being body colour on vellum.

More about Ehret

You can read more about Georg Dionysius Ehret on my webpage dedicated to this particular Past Master

Subscribe to BAA News
Get every blog post emailed to you when you
Subscribe to Botanical Art & Artists - News by Email

0 Comments

Selected New Zealand artists for ‘Ngāi Tipu Taketake - Indigenous Flora’ (Botanical Art Worldwide #3)

17/12/2017

0 Comments

Botanical Art Worldwide 2018 Exhibition in New Zealand

‘Ngāi Tipu Taketake - Indigenous Flora’ is New Zealand’s contribution to the Botanical Art Worldwide Exhibition in 2018. This post is about the 36 botanical artists and the 40 botanical paintings, fine art prints and illustrations selected for the exhibition - from the 96 submissions from 53 artists that were submitted.

The exhibition in New Zealand will open at Auckland Botanic Gardens, 102 Hill Road, Manurewa, Auckland, 2105 on March 30th 2018.

After it closes on 1st July 2018, it will then tour around the country for the rest of the year including the

The exhibition in New Zealand has been organised by the Friends of Auckland Botanical Gardens and Botanical Art Society of New Zealand, Inc. - with Lesley Alexander Smith, Sandra Morris and Liz Powell as the main organisers of the NZ exhibition. I'd like to thank Jenny Haslimeier for helping me to put this post together.

Entrance to the Auckland Botanic Garden

Selected Artists

Entries to the exhibition have been juried by a team consisting of

Sri Benham (botanical artist),
Dr. Ross Ferguson (Horticultural Scientist and Botanical Art Collector), and
Rebecca Stanley.

Jurors assessed submissions for botanical accuracy, as well as composition and technique.

Below you can find the names and profiles of the botanical artists whose work has been selected for the exhibition. Also included are images of some of the selected artworks - and there are some real stunners!

Please note that some artists have 2 artworks accepted.

The list below comprises:

image of the artwork (if available) - these include watercolour paintings, illustrations in pencil and pen and ink and different types of fine art prints
Name of Selected Artists - alphabetical by surname (with a link to their website or social media sites embedded if available)
followed by the name of the plant - Genus and species then Common name and/or Maori names/s
brief profile of the artist (if available)

Suzy Abbott
- Phormium tenax, New Zealand Flax, ‘Harakeke’, ‘Kōrari’
Suzy Abbott has been an active member of the Botanical Art Society of New Zealand (BASNZ) for 10 years, exhibiting annually. Her painting New Zealand Flax Phormium Tenax was one of the works in the 2014 Canterbury Plains Florilegium exhibition and was acquired by the Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

Phormium tenax, New Zealand Flax, ‘Harakeke’, ‘Kōrari’ by Suzy Abbott

Phormium tenax, New Zealand Flax, ‘Harakeke’, ‘Kōrari’ (watercolour on paper) Copyright Suzy Abbott

Lesley Alexander Smith (Facebook | Instagram)
- Agathis australis, ‘Kauri’
Lesley is a botanical artist living in Auckland. Originally from the UK, she studied Scientific Illustration (BA Hons 1st class) at Middlesex Polytechnic and worked as a medical illustrator before moving to New Zealand with her Kiwi husband and 3 young children in 2003. She completed a Diploma in Botanical Art through the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA), earning a Distinction in 2015. Painting plants in watercolour, graphite and ink are her passions. Lesley currently runs botanical illustration workshops at Kumeu Art Centre, Auckland.

Agathis australis, ‘Kauri’ (watercolour on vellum) copyright: Lesley Alexander

0 Comments

In Search of Rory McEwen - another chance to see the BBC documentary

9/12/2017

1 Comment

BBC4 In Search of Rory McEwen 23.30 on Monday 11 December 2017

The BBC documentary programme about Rory McEwen, first broadcast in 2015, is to be repeated on Monday.

If you missed 'In Search of Rory McEwen' first time around, I suggest you stay up late and/or set your device to record so you can watch this programme and then watch it again! The presenter is Jools Holland, who is married to Rory's daughter Christabel McEwan.

It is probably going to be available on iPlayer as well - and generally that's for around 30 days or longer if it goes into the Digital Archive of important programmes from the past. However I frankly wouldn't chance it and will be setting my digibox to record.

Those who know Jess Shepherd will also spot her small role in the documentary - painting in the Chelsea Physic Garden - see A grand day out for the BBC - which has lots of detail about what happens when you agree to participate in a BBC documentary!

Folk superstar and truth-seeking artist: The real Rory McEwen (8 December 2017) was published today on the BBC website. This tells the story of the music and art of Rory McEwen which is also told in the documentary. It's a good place to start if you don't know about his history and varied activities besides botanical art. It also features large images of a selection of Rory McEwen's brilliant botanical paintings

For those wanting to find out more and read more about Rory McEwen, I suggest you visit my dedicated webpage about him - About Rory McEwen, Botanical Artist (1932-1982).

1 Comment

ESBA Christmas Exhibition - opens tomorrow

24/11/2017

0 Comments

The Christmas Exhibition of the Edinburgh Society of Botanical Artists will open tomorrow at The John Hope Gateway at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (entrance via Arboretum Place).

The exhibition runs from 25th November - 2nd December (10am - 4pm) and admission is free - and the art will be excellent!

ESBA acts as an Alumni Association for past graduates of the RBGE Diploma Course in Botanical Illustration.

Below I've got images of some of the pen and ink drawings that Marianne Hazlewoodwill be showing. Marianne was the winner of the Eve Bennett Award for Botanical Illustration at this summer's Diploma graduation.

The drawings below were done by Marianne Hazlewood using Japanese ink paste on Lambeth Cartridge. The images are 'crops'. I think they're wonderful because they lend a distinctively contemporary 'edge' to her botanical art.

Marianne was inspired in her pen and ink drawings by Sarah Simblet (author of Botany for the Artist) who came to the Diploma course and did a day with the students.

While I was painting my Arisaema I wanted to illustrate these growing shoots because they were so fascinating, so I did a drawing for each of my specimens, it was such an amazing experience, one which I will be repeating
Marianne Hazlewood

The botanical artists with drawings, paintings and prints on display include:

Geoffrey Brown
Lyn Campbell
Karyn Dalrymple
Janette Dobson
Janet Dyer
Jenny Haslimeier
Nicola Macartney
Jacqui Pestell
Pamela Richardson
Sarah Roberts
Sharon Tingey
Janet Watson

Four of the six paintings of sunflowers in the 2014 RHS Botanical Art Show exhibit by Sharon Tingey

The image used as artwork for the flyer is by Sharon Tingey - one of the tutors on the RBGE Diploma Course - and is from her RHS Gold Medal winning suite of paintings of sunflowers. Read my blog post Interviews with six RHS Botanical Art Gold Medal Winners (2014) about the exhibition where she won her RHS Gold Medal

Subscribe to BAA News
Get every blog post emailed to you when you
Subscribe to Botanical Art & Artists - News by Email

0 Comments

About Raymond Booth 1929-2015

17/11/2017

0 Comments

A new page all about Raymond Booth

I have a new page about a twentieth century botanical artist of international renown who wasn't interested in exhibitions or what other people were doing. He was totally absorbed by his own work and growing his plants so he could paint them

Raymond Booth died in July 2015. At the time I don't think I'd appreciated quite how "collectable" he was - or how unique his approach to botanical art was.

About Raymond Booth is a new page in the 20th century Botanical Artists section of my website. he joins the other pages about:

The Fine Art Society represented him for over 50 years prior to his death and he had eight solo exhibitions in his lifetime and three since - and I'm only kicking myself that I didn't realise that two of them were held this year!

For those starting out, it's well worth while taking a look at his work:

he worked in oils on sized paper which is an approach I don't see at all these days
he produced a wonderful book Japonica Magnifica about Japanese plants - the works from which were exhibited at the Hunt Institute and then toured the USA in the mid 90s
the Fine Art Society website has wonderful exhibition catalogues which can be downloaded (see links on the new page) which show you how he created distinctly different types of botanical art.

It's also worth remembering that Shirley Sherwood and Alan Clark and other fans of botanical and wildlife art used to queue outside the Fine Art Society Gallery in New Bond Street as anew exhibition opened in order to be able to buy one of his paintings!

There's a wonderful comment by Shirley in her entry about him in 'Contemporary Botanical Artists' to the effect that she was very surprised that she was queuing on a chilly pavement at 7.30am in the morning - and was 16th in the queue to get in and buy a painting!

Note: This page came about because I met up with Shirley Sherwood to discuss my blog post about the British Botanical Artists exhibition and I was updating that post as a result of her very helpful comments when I got to Raymond - and it occurred to me to create a page for him - as an exemplar of the notion that not all botanical art needs to be watercolour!

0 Comments

The Magnificent Botanical Library of D. F. Allen

22/10/2017

0 Comments

For fans of botanical art history - I am pleased to present a wonderful opportunity for some leisurely browsing on a Sunday morning!

Sotheby's have an upcoming auction of the Botanical Library of D. F. Allen in New York. Prior to the auction they are showcasing three centuries of the finest illustrated botanical books in their auction house and online (via the catalogue and lots) prior to the auction on Thursday next week.

Auction: The Magnificent Botanical Library of D. F. Allen
Auctioneers/Venue: Sotheby's New York, 1334 York Avenue, New York 10021 USA
Date: 26 October starting at 10am EDT
Exhibition: 21st October - 25th October 2017

A double page spread in the catalogue about a book published Nicholas Von Jaquin

You can view the exhibition of the books at Sotheby's New York between now and Thursday. It's the very first time the books have been seen outside the Pacific northwest. The exhibition hours are

Sunday 1-5:00pm EDT
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - 10am-5pm EDT

Alternatively you can browse online either via the Lots or the online catalogue.
Or you can download the catalogue as a pdf file.

You can see a couple of examples of double page spreads within the catalogue below.

Enjoy your browsing!

A double page spread about The Expanded German Edition Of Elizabeth Blackwell’s Curious Herbal, With Plates By Nikolaus Eisenberger

The cover of the catalogue

0 Comments

<<Previous