NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Autumn 2023: Chinese watercolour of Asian Fruits

3/9/2023

When I change the seasonal banners for my website and Facebook Page, I normally try to pick images for each seasonal banner of flowers or fruits which I'm totally confident are correct for the season. However I've been totally seduced by a wonderful album of Chinese watercolours of Asian fruits - and I have absolutely no idea which ones are correct in which season or even what some of the fruits are - despite three trips to the east (Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia) and visiting local markets! Although I think I recognised some....

The main problem is none of the fruits are identified in English and indeed each is identified only by very faint arabic script. However I did recognise the pink pineapple which I regularly see fruiting in the Princess of Wales Glasshouse at Kew.

[Note: feel free to suggest what the fruits are in this image via the comments]

Page 21 of the Album of Chinese Watercolours of Asian Fruits

I found the album:

in the Biodiversity Heritage Library website
it's also on the Internet Archive and
available to view via the Harvard Library Viewer.

I think the source is the Dunbarton Oaks website where it is identified as a rare heritage folio of Album of Chinese watercolors of Asian fruits]. [between 1798 and 1810]. There's absolutely no indication as to who the painter is. Such labels as do exist are written in Arabic script - which makes one wonder why they were identified as Chinese Watercolours.

The Harvard reference page states...

Bill Archer and his wife Mildred, an English art historian who specialized in 18th- and 19th-century art in British India, curator of Prints and Drawings at the India Office Library from 1954 to 1980, viewed this album of watercolors at Dumbarton Oaks around 1958 and determined from their style and coloring that the album was most likely painted by a Chinese artist, probably in Malaysia or Sumatra. Archer dated the manuscript to between 1798 and 1810.

while the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library shelflist card apparently states

"Drawn by Indian artists under English influence: probably done in India but has no relation to Chinese artists - check where Chinese were working at this time in India or possibly in Indo-China. Indian artists started this vogue of drawing. Writing is perhaps Malaysian."

Whoever painted them, the first 12 paintings are absolutely fascinating as they are very elaborate compositions which fill the page. they comprise:

several fruit on each page
sometimes at different stages of their life cycle
sometimes peeled or segmented to reveal their internal structure
surrounded by relevant flowers and foliage

Each of the 12 images are well worth studying in terms of composition and arrangement.

Asian artists who go large.....

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Sue Wickison to receive The Jill Smythies Award 2023

13/4/2023

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The Linnean Society of London has announced that Sue Wickison is the recipient of the Jill Smythies Award 2023. This award - and medal - will be officially presented to Sue at the Society’s AGM/Anniversary Meeting in May 2023.

I have updated my The Jill Smythies Award page on this website to reflect this.

Below you can find out more about:

Sue Wickison - a summary of her life and achievements to date
The Jill Smythies Award

Sue Wickison in her studio with recent paintings - you can see the one in front of her framed and hung in an exhibition at Kew in the photo below

About Sue Wickison

Sue Wickison with two of her paintings in the "Plants of the Qur'an" Exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew

BIOGRAPHY

Sue Wickison was born in 1958 and brought up in Sierra Leone, West Africa. She now lives on an island off the coast of New Zealand and works as a freelance botanical illustrator - typically in relation to native New Zealand plants (unless working on commission).

Education: She achieved an Honours degree in Scientific Illustration from Middlesex University London - in the days when such degrees were still available!
Career: for nine years she worked as a scientific botanical illustrator with different botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew - and worked on various publications relating to Grasses, Orchids and Legumes.
Travel: Sue has travelled extensively collecting and illustrating botanical specimens.
Publications: Sue worked on worked on many illustrations for various floras and papers published in the Curtis's Botanical Magazine. She has produced very many botanical illustrations in monochrome and colour. The following are the main 'Kew Publishing' publications she produced illustrations for while working at Kew - and subsequently
- Grasses of Bahia, Renvoise, RBG Kew
- Legumes of Bahia, G. Lewis, RBG Kew
- Caesalpinia a revision of the Poincianella- Erythrostemon group, G .Lewis, RBG Kew
- Orchids of Vanuatu, B. Lewis and Cribb, RBG Kew
- Orchids of the Solomon Islands and Bougainville, B. Lewis and Cribb
- Orchids of Samoa, Whistler and Cribb, RBG Kew
- Plants of the Qur'an, Dr Shahina Ghazanfar
- Sue also has work included in “The Shirley Sherwood Collection: Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art" - by Shirley Sherwood'
Commissions: for various clients including New Zealand Plant Conservation Network - for the Individual Conservation Achievement Award given each year to recognise excellence in the field of plant conservation.
Collections: Sue has artwork in the collections of
- the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
- Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation,
- a Royal Collection
- Shirley Sherwood Collection, and
- the Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection
- various private art collections - mostly in the UK and New Zealand
Talks: Sue Wickison is giving an online talk about Plants of the Qur'an organised by Botanical Art Talks with Julia Trickey

One of the particularly noteworthy aspects of Sue's botanical illustrations is she does very much like painting plants with complex and/or unusual structures - often life size, irrespective of whether this means the paintings are also large!

Sue Wickison is an extremely accomplished botanical artist with field experience in many areas, namely the Solomon Islands, where she collected and recorded orchids. She has also worked on endangered species, depicting their life cycles, and has most recently illustrated Kew’s The Plants of the Qur’an: History and Culture by Dr Shahina Ghazanfar, with an accompanying exhibition running until Sunday 17 September at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art.
Narrative re The Jill Smythies Award

Dr Shahina Ghazanfar and Sue Wickison in front of two paintings from 'Plants of Qur'an' related to the Allium family.

AWARDS

Sue has received the following Awards prior to The Jill Smythies Award

Winston Churchill Trust Travelling Fellowship to travel to the Solomon Islands to collect orchids for Kew Gardens (see Artist Residencies, Scholarships and Bursaries on this website for more details). Sue discovered several new species of orchid and was honoured to have one, Coelogyne susanae, named after her.
2008: RHS Gold Medal for her exhibit about Arisaema at the RHS Botanical Art Show London (December 2008). Her exhibit comprised four graphite drawings and five watercolour paintings covering four different species
She has been awarded two Joyce Cumming Awards and two Certificates of Botanical Merit for work exhibited with the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA) in UK.

NOTABLE EXHIBITIONS

2006: Solo show at New Zealand House London and RHS
2007: Solo show (April / May 2007) at the Savill Gardens Windsor UK
2008: Arisaema at RHS Botanical Art Show, December 2008
2013: "Black and White in Colour" Exhibition (October 2013 - January 2014) - to which she contribute half the artwork for this Joint Exhibition with Sue Williams at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic, Gardens Kew (see my post 'Black and White in Colour' at Kew Gardens - a review)
2013: 13th International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration | Hunt Botanical Institute of Botanical Documentation
2016: Nature's Bounty at Kew | Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art
2023: "Plants of the Qur’ān" Exhibition (1 April 01 to September 17 2023) - Gallery 1 and 2 | Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

I'll be writing more about the latter exhibition in the near future and also publishing a video of a walk with Sue around the exhibition.

Sue Wickison in 2013 with her painting of Ravenala madagascariensis (Travellers Palm) which was added to the Shirley Sherwood Collection

You can

follow Sue on Instagram
connect with Sue via LinkedIn

About The Jill Smythies Award

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Three New Exhibitions at Kew Gardens announced

22/3/2023

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On the 1st April 2023, three new exhibitions open at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery in Kew Gardens:

The Wonderful World of Water Plants - botanical art and illustrations
Plants of the Qu'ran - a series of 25 botanical paintings by Sue Wickison
All the Flowers Are for Me - two installations by Anila Quayyum Agha

Brief descriptions of each are below.

The exhibitions are on from 1 April to Sunday 17 September 2023.

The Wonderful World of Water Plants

This exhibition in Galleries 5 and 6 comprises botanical art about plants that live their lives in water. It includes artwork from the Shirley Sherwood Collection about world-class water lilies, lavish lotuses, fascinating ferns and sensational sea grapes! ⁠

I'll be highlighting the botanical artists whose work is in this exhibition when I review it. I'm certainly expecting to see artwork by Beverley Allen, Pandora Sellars, Phansakdi Chakkaphak, Katherine Manisco and Lucy Smith.

Plants of the Qu'ran (Gallery 1 and 2)

The top half of my invitation to the Private View

sGalleries 1 and 2 will provide a world premiere of a newly completed series of 26 botanical paintings about the Plants of The Qur’an by Sue Wickison - plus a showcase of preliminary drawings and a video about the project (see below).

In search of accurate reference for the plants mentioned in the Holy Qur’ān, Sue has travelled to a number of countries including the UAE from the Empty Quarter in Abu Dhabi, into the deserts in Sharjah and to remote mountain farms in Oman to see heritage plants that have been grown for generations.

Developed in collaboration with Kew Botanist Dr Shahina Ghazanfar, this unique exhibition highlights the cultural, agricultural and botanical significance of a variety of plants referenced in the Qur’an.

Prior to moving to New Zealand, Sue Wickison was a botanical illustrator working for Kew for nine years on a variety of publications and has achieved a number of notable achievements - including this one.

Sue is also doing a talk about the project as part of Julia Tricket Talks on 27th April. I'm also personally looking forward to meeting up with Sue again very soon and having a long chat with her about this project and exhibition - and a few other things....

REFERENCE:

All the Flowers Are for Me

The large Gallery 3 has an exhibition of contemporary art which showcases two stunning pieces by the Pakistani-American contemporary artist Anila Quayyum Agha

Anila Quayyum Agha (b. Lahore, Pakistan) received her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore and an MFA from the University of North Texas.

All the Flowers are for Me is a large, laser-cut steel cube suspended from the ceiling which is inspired by patterns used in Islamic art and architecture. This will fill the gallery space with elaborate floor-to-ceiling shadow patterns - as you can see if you click the link in the title of the piece.

Stealing Moments (After Morris and Dürer), I and II, is a new work. It is receiving its UK premiere at Kew Gardens. This wall-mounted piece, constructed from stainless steel, is inspired by Great Piece of Turf , a watercolour by the pioneering botanical artist Albrecht Dürer. It is intended to demonstrate the constant evolution of botanical art forms, and highlights how traditional botanical painting remains a source of inspiration for contemporary art.

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RHS Silver Gilt Medals - Botanical Art Show 2022

10/4/2022

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This is about the botanical artists and illustrators from all over the world who were awarded an RHS Silver Gilt Medal at the The RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show last Friday.

My last blog post was about the Botanical Art Gold Medallists
My next blog post is about the Botanical Art Silver Medallists

If you'd like to visit the show at the Saatchi gallery, read RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show 2022 at the end of this post for more information about venue, dates, hours and tickets.

NOTE: Most of the photos and text in this post has been provided to me by the botanical artists exhibiting in the RHS Botanical Art Show. I'd love to expand to fill the gaps - and if I've got any details wrong please do not hesitate to contact me

Some of the exhibits with interesting stories will be highlighted in more depth in subsequent posts.

The hanging format picture provided to RHS by Melinda Edstein for her exhibit "Red flowering, bird pollinated Australian flowers"

RHS Silver Gilt Medals for Botanical Art 2022

I always think the Silver Gilt Medal exhibits are really interesting to study in some depth. These are the exhibits which are within the spectrum of

EITHER just missing out on a Gold Medal;
OR adding something extra which elevated their work beyond Silver.

This is the group for which the oft repeated mantra (at least by me) is particularly relevant.

An exhibit is only as good as the weakest painting.

In other words, errors and weaknesses are what lead an exhibit to lose points in the scoring of the different criteria used for judging the exhibits.

I can see people in this list who, for me, obviously have the capacity to come back and get a Gold Medal. Can you spot them?

These are the RHS Silver Gilt Medallists , listed in alphabetical order by country.

AUSTRALIA

Andrew Carr - Two Western Australia Eucalypts
Melinda Edstein - Red flowering, bird pollinated Australian flowers

ROMANIA

Irina Neacsu - On Transylvania's botanical remedies - Winter Berries

TAIWAN

Annie Chen - Jewels in the Amazon Rainforest

Catherine Day - Species Lilies
Margaret Fitzpatrick - Threats to the Hose Chestnut Tree documented in 2020
Julia Groves - Seeds of Hope
Maureen Hallahan - Plant Lore

Rui Jiang - Violas (Violaceae)

Pamela Taylor - Trees: Form and Structure
Julie Whelan - Passiflora

USA

Susan Tomlinson - From Field to T-Shirt: Diversity in modern elite cotton bolls (see image below)

The botanical artists and illustrators below are listed alphabetically by surname.

Each profile includes something about the exhibit and something about the artist.
Links to their websites (or other social media site) is embedded in their name IF a link is available

Some of the exhibits will be covered in more depth at a later date.

Andrew Carr - Two Western Australia Eucalypts

Two Western Australia Eucalypts by Andrew Carr

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Plantae 2022: Call for Entries for the SBA's Annual Open Exhibition

24/2/2022

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Call for entries poster with REVISED DEADLINE for entries

This is a guide to the OPEN Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists in 2022 and

who can enter,
what you can enter
how to enter

The Call for Entries for Plantae 2022 - the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists - and the first held in a gallery since 2019 - went out the middle of this month.

UPDATE: The deadline for entries has been CHANGED (from 15th March 2022) and is now midnight on Thursday 31st March 2022.

The Society invites artists to submit their very best work to our open exhibition. Whether an artist working in watercolour, oils, gouache, graphite, colour pencil or pen & ink, a botanical illustrator, a printmaker, ceramic artists, sculptor, jeweller or glass artist, we are seeking work with a strong exhibiting presence to be part of our show at the Mall Galleries.

NOTE: I'm going to try and get back into the swing of 'normal posting' following my surgery at the end of January. Three weeks later I've adjusted to life on one leg and wanting to do more - albeit from my sofa with my ankle elevated!

The ORIGINAL call for entries deadline - which has been changed to 31st March 2022

The Annual Exhibition
of the Society of Botanical Artists

In common with a lot of other art societies, the last two exhibitions (in 2020 and 2021) have had to be virtual due to the constraints on art exhibitions.

Consequently, this is very likely to be the first SBA annual exhibition in a gallery since 2019 - when it moved to the Mall Galleries on The Mall in London. (That's the road which has Buckingham Palace at one end!).

Venue for Plantae 2022 Exhibition: Mall Galleries in The Mall
Dates: Opens to the public on 15-18th June 2022. A Private View for members, artists and their guests will be held on 14th June.

I've been visiting and reviewing this annual exhibition since 2006 - to start with on my art blog Making A Mark and latterly on this website. My posts contain a lot of images of artwork selected for hanging if you've not submitted before and want to get an idea of the standard of work that gets selected. See the end for how to access my reviews.

The entrance to the new exhibition venue - at the Mall Galleries on The Mall in London (right next to Admiralty Arch and just up the road from Buckingham Palace

Who can enter?

THIS IS AN OPEN EXHIBITION - That means that any visual artist, anywhere in the world, can enter if they produce botanical artwork in two or three dimensions - which meets the eligibility criteria (see below).

Botanical artists from other countries around the world frequently submit entries to this exhibition - and get selected for exhibition.

Prizes and Certificates of Botanical Excellence are awarded.

You do not have to be a member of the Society of Botanical Artists to submit an entry.

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VIDEO: About Zeng Xiaolian and the new Art Museum named after him

15/12/2021

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This morning I got a message telling me about a new video about Zeng Xiaolian - China's top botanical painter - and a new museum which opened this month in Kumming, which is devoted to his artworks.

It has English subtitles and commentary so is both very accessible as well as a very interesting profile of this leading botanical painter.
I recommend you watch full screen as it presents better
I'd like to draw particular attention to the pen and ink drawings in the video which are masterful in the use of lines which never overlap. It should also be noted that he paints in various media.
(Thanks to Carolyn Lim for sending me the link)

Below you can find out more about him.

Timeline for Professor Zeng Xiaolian

Professor Zeng Xiaolian has created more than 2,000 illustrations and has been published in over 50 scientific publications - including 'Flora of China'.

Professor Zeng Xiaolian - sitting in the new museum devoted to his artwork in Kumming

1939 - born in Kunming, China

1958 - he joined the Kunming Institute of Botany in Yunnan Province, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

1958-1997 he worked as

a senior engineer of Kunming Botanical Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and as
Illustrator, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming,

He is also Former Chairman of the Botanical Scientific Illustration Society of China.

Flora of China
The enormous project, consisting of 126 volumes, records some 31,000 types of plants. It took 45 years to complete and involved the efforts of more than 300 botanists and 160 painters. Zeng said he is proud to be part of the team

Over the two decades since his retirement, he created numerous wonderful drawings of flowers and birds, which are both accurate depictions of the nature and tributes to beauty and life.

2016 - Exhibited at the 15th International at the Hunt. He has also been selected for numerous national exhibitions in China, the United States, Canada and Australia.

With his masterpiece "Journey of Chinese plants," on exhibition in the China Pavilion at the Beijing International Horticultural Expo in 2019 | Courtesy of Zeng Xiaolian

2019 - he exhibited his enormous masterpiece painting "Journey of Chinese plants," in the China Pavilion at the Beijing International Horticultural Expo. It features 37 plants which originally grew in China and then spread around the world.

September 2021 - The exhibition "One Flower, One Bird, One World" opens at Kunming Contemporary Art Museum, 1903 Triumphal Arch, Qianwei West Road Park, Xishan District, Kunming City, Yunnan Province - and continues until 5 Janury 2022. It includes more than 80 newly created works by Zeng Xiaolian on display.

December 2021 - a museum named after him is opened at the site of the 99th World Expo in Kunming.

He is currently working on a series about the rainforests in Xishuangbanna in southwest China's Yunnan Province

You can find out more about him and see more of his artwork in the following articles.
He is also listed on my page about Botanical Artists in Asia

REFERENCE:

60 Years of Blossoming Botany | Chinese Academy of Sciences
Nature in Art: Man devotes life to painting plants | CGTN
The Chinese plant Raphael, Zeng Xiaolian used the tip of a pen to outline the song of life in nature | Min.News
Visit to Botanical Art Exhibition of Prof. Zeng Xiao Lian | Science and Sustainable Development (April 2019)
Zeng Xiao Lian botanical watercolor | Art Kaleidoscope

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The Botanical World of Raymond Booth - exhibition at The Garden Museum

3/12/2021

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The Botanical World of Raymond Booth opened at the Garden Museum next to Lambeth Palace in London on 1st December. It continues until 6th February 2022.

I've seen his botanical artwork - in oils - before in an exhibition at the Watts Gallery in Surrey in April 2019. I can highly recommend a visit to see his paintings despite the fact that I didn't get to see this exhibition yesterday before going into isolation today (for ankle surgery on Monday). I've been finding exhibitions in general a stretch too far of late.

You can read About Raymond Booth (1929-2015) in the dedicated page I've created on my website.

Raymond Booth was a botanical, wildlife and natural history artist of international renown who lived a reclusive life in Yorkshire and exhibited with the Fine Art Society.

I have my fingers crossed that there might be a remote chance of me being able to get to see the exhibition before it closes in February - if I'm out of my cast and in a boot by then.

If you too have problems getting to see this exhibition, you can order the very reasonably priced catalogue from the Garden Museum - which I've just done!

Cover ofthe Exhibition Catalogue

This catalogue to accompany the exhibition includes an essay by guest curator Peyton Skipwith, a fine art consultant and former Deputy Managing Director of The Fine Art Society, as well as an introduction by Garden Museum Curator Emma House and is illustrated with the full exhibition selection of Booth’s paintings.

If you want to check out more of his artwork before deciding whether or not to visit the exhibition, I suggest you check the Memorial Catalogue of his work on Issuu - it's very illuminating as to the exceptionally high quality of his paintings.

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