NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

The Highgrove Florilegium on splendid display in Chelsea

23/9/2021

“The Highgrove Florilegium:
Watercolours Depicting Plants Grown in The Garden at Highgrove”

Paintings are organised according to the different parts and rooms within the garden at Highgrove

After visiting the RHS London Botanical Art & Photography Show in Chelsea on Tuesday (of which more later), I walked down to Chelsea Barracks to see what I think might be the first display in London of all the paintings completed for the Highgrove Florilegium (Volumes 1 and 2) since 2009.

“The Highgrove Florilegium: Watercolours Depicting Plants Grown in The Garden at Highgrove” is only on until Sunday 26th September. It's also very easy to access for those visiting the Chelsea Show. The paintings are hung in the former Guards Chapel in the former Chelsea Barracks - now known as the Garrison Chapel - which is now owned by The Prince's Foundation Trust - hence the location of the exhibit.

I cannot recommend this exhibition too much. The quality of the paintings is excellent.
In fact, this is a much better exhibition of contemporary botanical art than the current RHS Botanical Art Show.

The Cottage Garden

To my mind, it's also a much better exhibition than the original one twelve years ago, which was in a very small space in the Garden Museum at Lambeth Palace. (See my original review of the exhibition Exhibition Review: The Highgrove Florilegium at the Garden Museum (14th July 2009)

This time there's much more focus on the paintings and much less on the book - which is nowhere to be seen!

The big bonus of this exhibition is that the space is large and the paintings have been hung according to the different "rooms" of the garden where the subject plants were located. As such, it's a much better representation of the garden at Highgrove - which, of course, is what a florilegium is intended to do.

The paintings also look excellent on the green walls and they benefit from both natural light and additional lighting but both are up high so there's some reflection but not too much.

The Kitchen Garden and The Nursery

The Highgrove Florilegium is the first Royal Florilegium in the UK. It contains botanically accurate watercolour paintings of the plants grown in the garden of Highgrove near Tetbury in Gloucestershire - which has been the country home of the Prince of Wales since 1980.

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A Florilegium: Sheffield’s Hidden Garden

22/5/2021

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In July, a new botanical art book about a Florilegium will be published.
A Florilegium: Sheffield’s Hidden Garden has been written by Valerie Oxley in liaison with The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens.

front cover of the book

The book provides

an introduction to florilegia dating from the early herbals
a history of the Society’s Herbarium and the Gardens themselves
a selection of the botanical illustrations of plants in the garden held in the archive of The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens.

The illustrations have all been drawn and painted by botanical artists who are past or present members of The Florilegium Society. In addition, each illustration included in the book is accompanied by a plant profile, stating where the plant was found in the wild and explaining something of its history, uses and botany.

About the Author

This book has been written by the Florilegium Society’s founding chair Valerie Oxley - in association with The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens.
Valerie is a freelance tutor in botanical illustration and the current President of IAPI (Institute for Analytical Plant Illustration), who inspired students from all over the world with her enthusiasm for natural history, and plant illustration in particular. She also:

developed the first Diploma in Botanical Illustration with colleagues at the University of Sheffield
used to moderate the Botanical Illustration Diploma Course at the RBG Edinburgh
wrote "Botanical Illustration" (2008) - an instruction book for aspiring botanical illustrators botanical which I highly recommend. You can read my review on this website and my summary (below) bodes well for the new book.

An excellent manual for anybody who wants to learn more about botanical illustration with a strong botanical perspective.
Book Review: Botanical Illustration by Valerie Oxley

Details of the book

Author: Valerie Oxley - in association with The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens
Publisher: The Crowood Press Ltd
Publication date: 6th July 2021
Format:

Hardback (Price £25)
e-book
ISBN-10 : 1785008943 | ISBN-13 : 978-1785008948

Number of pages: 160 pages
Number of Illustrations: 100 colour illustrations
Weight: 843 g
Dimensions: 280 x 220 x 17 mm

The Florilegium Society's website does yet not provide a profile page for the book.
If you're interested in ordering a copy from the publisher, I suggest you click the link embedded in the title at the top of this post. and order direct from the publishers.

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Spring 2021 Banner: Citrus limon from the Gottorfer Codex

1/3/2021

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Citrus limon (gouache on vellum) published by Johannes Simon Holtzbecker in the Gottorfer Codex (4 volumes published 1649-1659)

A Citrus lemon painted in gouache on vellum is the Spring 2021 banner image for Botanical Art and Artists on this website's home page and Facebook Page. The image is cropped to create the banner image as per the image below.

This post is about that painting and the Gottorfer Codex which it is part of.

Spring 2021 Banner Image - for the website and facebook page

The Gottorfer Codex

The Gottorfer Codex can be summarised as follows:

It is a florilegium i.e. a record of the very wide assortment of plants that grew in the ducal gardens at Schloss Gottorf (Gottorp) in the duchy of Schleswig. (See the engraving of the castle and garden below)
It comprises four volumes of botanical paintings
It contains images of 1,180 plants over 350 pages of vellum
by Johannes (Hans) Simon Holtzbecker (1610-1671) - a German artist and flower painter who lived in Hamburg. He was responsible for
- the Gottorfer Codex and
- the Moller Florilegium
- the Green Florilegium
Commissioned by Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp
Published between between 1649 and 1659
The Gottorfer Codex is now the property of Denmark
- It is part of the Royal Collection of Graphic Art, a part of the National Gallery of Denmark.
- ownership of the Codex transferred after the Great Northern War (1700-1721) when Gottorf Castle and the duke's portion of the duchy of Schleswig were annexed to the Danish crown.
It's been restored in recent years - so that all the vellum is flat and all the paint is securely attached - and can be photographed more easily.

In 2009, a digital version of the codex was created by the National Gallery of Denmark.
VIEW a digitised version of the Gottorfer Codex on Issuu

In 2014, there was an exhibition Der Gottorfer Codex. Flowers and worldview at Gottorf Castle between 25th May and 26th October 26, 2014.

The image is of a lemon tree in blossom. The treatment of the leaves and variety of greens is sophisticated.

An engraving (1745) of the Castle and Garden in 1745 - some 75 years after the publication of the Gottorfer Codex

Neither the Gottorfer Codex nor Holtzbecker are referenced in any of the standard reference books about botanical illustration - which is interesting. It occurs to me that the fact that the only books which do reference it are in German might account for this. It's also very early. However, the current theory is that most of his work was largely unrecognised because - until relatively recently - most of it was attributed to Maria Sibylla Merian.

Holtzbecker is now regarded as one of the finest German botanical artists of the 17th century.

The Gottorfer Codex is also very definitely a real book of splendid botanical illustrations. Below are two videos about the restoration of the Gottorfer Codex by the National Archives in Denmark - in which you can see the book and original paintings and the methods used to restore the paintings, pages, binder and book covers.

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Lizzie Sanders (1950 - 2020)

29/7/2020

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It has been announced that the renowned botanical artist and illustrator Lizzie Sanders GM passed away last week, age 70.

Lizzie Sanders in her studio

Born in London on 4 January 1950, she had lived in Edinburgh since 1983 - near to the Botanic Garden where she also taught botanical illustration to very many students. Anne Carlaw, the Chairperson of the Scottish Society of Botanical Artists announced her death via an email to members today.

In it she described Lizzie and her work as both an artist and as a teacher.

"many of us were fortunate to have been taught by Lizzie at the Botanics and even more of you will have been familiar with her stunning work.

Lizzy was the doyenne of dry brush work. To watch her in action was a joy, to try and replicate her technique took considerable practice, time and a shed load of patience. "

It seemed appropriate to use as an example of her stunning botanical artwork, her painting of Sutherland Kale - produced for Flora Scotia and published - as a feature image - in Scottish Plant Lore

Sutherland Kale © Lizzie Sanders - painted for Flora Scotia in 2018 and featured in the introduction to the Catalogue "Scottish Plant Lore"

Favourites are always bold, structural plants which themselves make a grand statement and which lead to careful, sometimes unconventional, composition.
from her website

Lizzie Sanders Timeline

1950: Lizzie Sanders was born in London on 4 January 1950.
1967-71: Lizzie studied for a Diploma in Art, Graphic Design and Typography at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee
1981-82: She left Scotland to study Strategic Advertising and Television Production at the Visual Arts School in New York
She then pursued a career in Design and spent many years working as a Designer for advertising companies in Italy (1975-80) and as an Art Director in New York (1981-1982).
1983 - she finally returned to Scotland and spent seven years as an Art Director or Design Director at two companies in Edinburgh.
1988: awarded Scottish Designer of the Year.
1990-2000 - she was a Founding Partner of a firm of Design Consultants
1990: Lizzie was a keen gardener, she took some classes in botanical illustration at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh between 1991 and 1996. She also took short courses with Annie Farrer (Kew); Pauline Dean (RHS Wisley) and Claire Dalby (Cambridge Botanic Garden). She never looked back, eventually giving up her design career to concentrate on botanical illustration.
As well as creating impressive botanical illustrations she also started teaching art students about how to improve their art and design
She lived in Edinburgh, near the Royal Botanic Gardens, where she found many of the natural specimens she painted
She died in July 2020.

Artwork by Lizzie Sanders

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Book Review: 'Roses' by Rosie Sanders

9/9/2019

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I was expecting Rosie Sanders's new book about Roses to be very good - but wasn't expecting to be quite so bowled over by her watercolour paintings of roses which fill the pages of this large book.

Her botanical paintings are as as large on the page as they are on the walls of the gallery in Chelsea where her latest solo exhibition will be opening on the day it is published.

Rosie has been drawing, sketching and painting roses for this book and her latest exhibition (see the end for details) for the last three years.

She grows all her own roses and knows them all by name - even if she sometimes forgets where she has put them - until they flower!

She's also been making notes about her roses on a regular basis, what they have been getting up to and what colours they are displaying. Many artists find writing about their subjects helps to fix their image in their brains - and Rosie seems to be no exception. The notes are divided between facsimiles of her handwritten notes and typed up versions of the same. I rather assume the latter are the ones which might just have rings from her coffee mug on them as she sits in her garden in the morning with her cup of coffee surveying what has been happening to her roses in the last day or so.

This approach to the text helps make this book feel a lot more personal to Rosie and I really like it. More of the individual seems to come to the fore. Rosie's writing is graphic and excellent and I personally found it very readable. I do wonder however whether reading handwriting might make this book a little bit more of a challenge for those who don't use English as their first language.

Red Sensation

Shades of Red

What I particularly like about this book is there as a much clearer sense of the process - which should particularly appeal to those botanical artists who like her paintings.

On some double page spreads we also have preliminary drawings and colour charts of the colours used in the painting - with colours randomly noted either next to the colour boxes or in the text. She also includes some fast watercolour sketches recording habit and colour notes.

This is a timelapse video of Rosie Sanders painting a rose in watercolour.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté's book of paintings about Les roses is the pre-eminent tour de force in the "books about roses by botanical artists" category of artists' botanical art books. His roses are perfection and I doubt anybody will ever better it in terms of portraying perfect specimens.

However in terms of painting roses in reality - I think Rosie's book will also be seen as a tour de force and a standard. She paints roses as we see them in the garden - some new and fresh with both buds and blooms - while others are fading and past their best, In effect she has created a florilegium of roses growing in her garden - and has painted some on more than one occasion - notably her one yellow rose 'Celebration'.

She seems to have a particular affinity with the back of a rose and what happens behind or underneath the petals of the rose in question. It suggests an artist in love with all stages of the life cycle and the multiplicity of colours and shades they can go through from first bud to last breath.

Book cover only has the title on the front cover on the paper slip cover

The Introduction to the book provides a history of the rose in in the history of ancient times, middle ages and more recent time - as a symbol, in art, in war, in religion, as an emblem of love. It also comments on the different types of rose and where they hail from. I found it one of those introductions which is so packed full of information that it's probably best read in small chunks.

However there is no obvious connection between the Introduction and the paintings. It's almost as if we have two books in one cover.

What's missing from the book - and I do think this is worth noting - is any sort of introduction to Rosie and why she likes painting roses and what her project comprises. Instead we find bits out as we read her notes - and I do very much recommend you read all the notes!

The book has an interesting and unique index in which every rose in the book is presented by a thumbnail. Below you can see two of the tree pages which form the index.

An Index by rose (and name and size) at the end of the book

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This is a woman who likes BIG projects and has a track record of pulling them off in spectacular fashion!

Notwithstanding the bits which don't quite work for me, I think this is an excellent book which will be much appreciated by all rose lovers - who will doubtless appreciate that many of the roses were sourced from David Austin.

I also expect that very many botanical artists will be buying this book in order to study Rosie's approach - which - in short - is grounded in much time spent in intense observation and an awful lot of effort in creating hundreds of studies, sketches and paintings - of which these are the ones which deserve a public stage.

The production qualities of this large book are also excellent. The photography of both drawings and paintings is top notch and the printing is superb with a very robust cover and binding. (For those interested in such things the reproduction was done by Rival Colour Ltd. - who are based in Greenwich - and the printing was done in China (as happens to most books these days) by 1010 Printing International Ltd and is a company associated with books which have won British Book Design & Production Awards.

ORDER THIS BOOK

Rosie Sanders' Roses: A celebration in botanical art from Amazon UK
Rosie Sanders' Roses: A Celebration of Botanical Art from Amazon.com

Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Batsford Ltd - an imprint of Pavilion Books
Publication date: 26 Sept. 2019 - the date her exhibition opens in Chelsea
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1849945527
ISBN-13: 978-1849945523
Product Dimensions: 24.5 x 31.1 cm
RRP: £30

In effect, the book is the same size and format as her last book Rosie Sanders' Flowers: A Celebration of Botanical Art

The dark side of the moon

About the author and artist - Rosie Sanders

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Call for Entries: Botanical Artists in Residence Program at the Oak Spring Foundation

3/8/2019

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The inaugural Botanical Artists in Residence Program (BAiR) offered by the Oak Spring Garden Foundation is now accepting applications - as part of its Artists Awards program

The opportunities offered by BAiR and the requirements for applications are detailed below, followed by

information about other artists awards made by OGSF and
how to find out more about the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and its gardens, library and botanical art.

What's on offer

a $1,500 award
stay at the Oak Spring estate in Upperville, Virginia - with accommodation and 24-hour access to studio space.
for a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of four weeks sometime during the period April 1 – May 22, 2020.
ground transportation to/from Oak Spring (from either Dulles Airport or Union Station).
This is a copy of the 2020 OSGF Residency Handbook
This is a link to the Oak Spring Foundation's page on Google Arts and Culture which demonstrates some of the artwork in the Library.

Transportation to/from Washington, D.C. is the responsibility of the applicant.

The aim of this program is to extend our support for artists to practitioners of botanical illustration

The Oak Spring Estate - home to the Oak Spring Garden Foundation - from above (House and gardens bottom left and Library top left) in Upperville, Virginia

What's required

Artists must choose from plants in Oak Spring’s living collection, during the period of residency. in order to maintain the integrity of The Oak Spring Florilegium
Artists must submit at least one original artwork produced as a result of the residency to The Oak Spring Florilegium and assign all copyright in the artwork to the Florilegium.

The award is contingent upon the awardee submitting one original work that Oak Spring obtains full copyright to, and which will become part of The Oak Spring Florilegium.

Artists will also be asked to provide digital submissions of other works started or completed on-site for an archive held at Oak Spring. However, the artists may keep their original sketches and any additional original works produced as part of the residency.

Who can apply?

Botanical artists who:

demonstrate artistic excellence in botanical art over time
have been selected to exhibit in international juried exhibitions of botanical art.
are available for a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of four weeks during April 1 – May 22, 2020 for a residency on the Oak Spring estate in Upperville, Virginia
have a visa to visit the USA if a non-resident/citizen
can finance getting and from Washington DC (Dulles Airport or Union Station)

What you have to do to apply

First READ the flyer about the Botanical Artists in Residence Program (BAiR)

Next

create a profile and login to our OSGF Applicant Portal at osgf.force.com/grantee/.
Log in and select “Explore Grant Opportunities” in the upper left
Select “2020 Botanical Artists Application.”

You may encounter errors in creating an application profile if you use Safari as your web browser. Please try using a different web browser, and if you continue to encounter issues, try clearing your cache.

You must submit

a resume/curriculum vitae (not to exceed 3 pages);
a short description of your creative practice and how you would benefit from a residency at Oak Spring;
five images of your best works (required). All images submitted must be of art executed by hand in two-dimensional media including watercolor, pencil, pen and ink, colored pencil, mixed media, oil, acrylic, gouache, egg tempera, and original prints (aquatints, etchings, etc.).
any and relevant links/uploads to/of an online portfolio of work (optional);
references who can speak to your artistic practice and suitability as a resident. (Successfully completed residencies at other arts organizations or botanical institutions will be an asset.)

Deadline for receipt of applications: November 8, 2019 at midnight EST.

The aim is to notify all applicants on the status of our selections by mid-December 2019.

Other Artists Awards

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BISCOT 2019 & RBGE Florilegium at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

13/6/2019

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In this post I'm sharing photos of:

BISCOT medal winning artists with their paintings - at the BISCOT Exhibition at Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (RBGE)
paintings for the NEW RBGE Florilegium

You can see the exhibition of paintings

AT: The John Hope Gateway, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Arboretum Place, EH3 5NZ
UNTIL: 20 June 2019

About Botanical Images Scotia (BISCOT)

BISCOT is an acronym for "Botanical Images Scotia". It's an annual international exhibition in Scotland of contemporary botanical illustration which

promotes excellence in botanical painting and illustration.
gives both national and international artists an opportunity to exhibit in Edinburgh and presents new and original botanical work.

Each exhibitor creates a display of SIX artworks - and the exhibition is open to and attracts international entrants. In this respect BISCOT is the Scottish equivalent of the RHS Botanical Art Show in London - and is regarded as the top show in Scotland in terms of awards and prestige.

Below are photos of artists with their paintings after the exhibition transferred from Gardening Scotland to the RBGE John Hope Gateway last week.

Gold Medals

Fran Thomas (Scotland, UK) - Scottish Native Cladonia Lichens
Sansanee Deekrajang (Thailand) - Tropical Palm Trees
Marianne Hazlewood (Scotland, UK) - Arisaema biseasonal
Simonetta Occhipinti (Italy) - The Golden Fruits

Fran Thomas (Scotland, UK) - Scottish Native Cladonia Lichens (GOLD Medal)

Fran Thomas GM (Biscot) - Fran paints native Scottish plants. In 2017 she also won a Gold Medal at BISCOT 2017 and the Mary Mendum Medal for the Best Exhibit - for her watercolour paintings of "Native plants of the coasts and islands of the Firth of Forth". She also has two RHS Silver Gilt Medals.

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