NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

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

3/12/2021

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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Botanical Art Exhibitions - October / November 2021

25/10/2021

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This is a summary of the botanical art exhibitions open in London and Cambridge during October and November in London.

If your botanical art exhibition is not listed and should be please contact me and I will update.

Exhibitions at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens

THREE new exhibitions opened on 16th October and run until 27 March 2022

Zadok Ben-David: Natural Reserve - The first UK-based solo exhibition to incorporate new and existing works by Zadok Ben-David since 2008. Brand new and extended artworks are featured, including the stunning 360-degree installation Blackfield which is made up of more than 17,000 etched, hand-painted flowers.
Elegant and Enchanting - an exhibition of artworks by renowned Japanese botanical artists who include Asuka Hishiki, Hideo Horikoshi, Mariko Ikeda, Mieko Ishikawa and Kimiyo Maruyama. The exhibition also includes artworks by artists from China and Thailand.

ReflectionS Show – No Plants, No Planet - This digital exhibit of artwork by members of the Association of British Botanical Artists - which aims to stimulate discussion about diversity and the impact of climate change - is available to view in the Shirley Sherwood Galleries as well as on the ABBA website.

Exhibition at the Garden Museum, Lambeth

Elizabeth Blackadder: Favourite Flowers (19 October - 21 November 2021)

The late Dame Elizabeth Blackadder was one of Scotland’s greatest artists, celebrated for her beguiling and lyrical paintings of flowers. A passionate plantswoman, Blackadder’s garden provided her with rich inspiration year-round, from daffodils to autumn leaves, tulips, iris and lilies.

This exhibition, curated with The Scottish Gallery, brings together a selection of her watercolours, etchings and screenprints from throughout her life in the theme of growth, looking ahead to the renewal of life that is always around the corner in the garden.

Exhibition at the Images of Nature Gallery,
Natural History Museum, South Kensington

The Artistic Legacy of Joseph Banks has two new displays installed in the Images of Nature Gallery - which run until 13 January 2022

Artworks by Johann Jacob Dillenius - a new display of early eighteenth-century depictions of plants by Johann Jacob Dillenius (1687-1747) who was appointed as the first Sherardian professor of botany at Oxford.
Items from Captain Cook's Endeavour voyage - An original artwork and a herbarium specimen from Captain Cook's Endeavour voyage of 1768-1771. You can see more of his drawings in Wikimedia Commons

Exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

Scent from Nature: Beauty's Botanical Origins - to Sunday 31st October 2021
Booking required / Free Entry

The exhibition includes botanical watercolours of plants, from the permanent collection. It focuses on those used in the scent industry. These are displayed displayed alongside perfume vessels from ancient times to the 20th century.
Works include those by:

Pieter Withoos (1655-92),
Nicolas Robert (1614–85),
Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708–70),
Joseph von Plenck (1735–1807),
Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) and
Henriette Knip (1783–1842)

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An Art Fair for Botanical Artists!

22/8/2020

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I've been thinking for some time that it's about time somebody started running art fairs for those interested in artwork involving plants.

Not necessarily an art fair which is strictly botanical - because a wider range of quality artwork about plants brings in more people - and that, in turn, enables more potential art collectors to see and appreciate botanical art.

It would seem The Garden Museum in Lambeth had the same idea.....

Super Nature is London’s first fair for art inspired by plants
Dates: Saturday 10th - Sunday 11th October 2020
Hours: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm).
Tickets: £5 online and £7.50 at the door.
I'm also guessing there will be a limit on numbers so 'first come, first served"?

It includes artwork being exhibited by 25 participating artists and three workshops. for more details see below

UPDATE: I understand from Sarah Jane Humphrey that she is not now participating and I've written to the Garden Museum seeking clarification re events and artists.

UPDATE 2: The page on their website has now been updated and the ONLY artists participating in this art fair are:

Anita Gwynn
Fiona Wheeler
JamJar Edit
Julia Patience
Kate Friend
Kevin Dutton
Kit Boyd
Laura Gee
Mary MacCarthy
Natasha Coverdale
Tessa Pearson

which is a CONSIDERABLE REDUCTION on those originally listed when tickets were being sold.

Artists

I didn't see a Call for Entries so I'm guessing that the participating artists may have been invited as there are a limited number and a fairly eclectic mix (including established still life artists) - but all sound artists using a variety of media and approaches to portrait plants.

I also noticed that there were some names I recognised - from the Society of Botanical Artists - and another artist who has work included in my book!

The artists are listed below. Click the link to see their website. I've split them into botanical artists - or at least those who draw accurately and the remainder who are more impressionistic

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Tradescant's Orchard - images of the exhibition at the Garden Museum

4/9/2017

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This review of the exhibition - which includes images of the paintings and some of the artists - should have been written a very long time ago. The reason why this hasn't happened is explained at the end.

I've written two previous posts about Tradescant's Orchard Exhibition at the Garden Museum exhibition which are:

Tradescant's Orchard: A Celebration of Botanical Art (12 April 2017) - introducing the exhibition and listing the participating artists (with links to their websites)
Tradescant's Orchard - a Video of the exhibition (13 June 2017) posted after the opening and just prior to the Private View.

Below are photos of the exhibition - and of some of the artists with their paintings at the Private View - held on the evening of 13th June 2017 - organised as follows

some interior views of the Garden Museum - so you can see where the exhibition is located. It's the same space as that used by the Garden Museum for the exhibition of the Highgrove Florilegium back in 2009.
The Tradescant's Orchard volume - on loan from the Bodelian Museum
The Exhibition - including a slideshow of images of the paintings
The Artists - not all of them but a goodly number!
The exhibition organisers and sponsors; and finally
the explanation for the delay - which is maybe not what anybody was expecting. I know I wasn't!

Tradescant's Orchard exhibition - inside the newly revamped Garden Museum

Private View Speeches - Lucinda Grant and Lesley Ann Sandbach organisers of the exhibition explain how it all came together.

The Tradescant's Orchard

The exhibition includes a display of ‘The Tradescants’ Orchard’, a seventeenth-century volume of sixty-six watercolours (usually to be found in the Bodleian Museum in Oxford) depicting fruit varieties that John Tradescant and his son might have grown in their market garden at Lambeth.

The Tradescant's Orchard - a volume of watercolours lent by the Bodleian Museum

The 17th Century watercolours are from the collection of Elias Ashmole, whose collection founded the Ashmolean Museum, and are considered one of the Bodleian Library’s greatest treasures. The Orchard is a practical document that records the size, colour and texture of fruit with their ripening dates. This is the first time they have been lent to an exhibition outside Oxford, and the Museum are displaying them in a brand new exhibition space.

You can read more about the Tradescants (father and son) on:

The exhibition

The paintings are organised in groups of similar orchard fruit - and it was very interesting to see what was chosen. In part I guess because I was interested to see what fruits were available to John Tradescant back in the days when he was the royal gardener and was growing fruit trees in Lambeth.

I was actually a little bit surprised at some of the duplication. I guess I was thinking the project would start with a list of plants based on the book and then people would pick what they wanted to do - with only one person doing one type of plant. However that's my only negative as the exhibition reveals a high standard of botanical art - with some exceptional pieces.

I've set up the images of the paintings as a SLIDESHOW (below) because they're wider than usual. It will play automatically if you put your cursor over the image andclick the "Play" button top left. If you want to look at your own pace or retrace and look at the last one for longer, use the arrows which are middle of the image - on the right and left.

I've included some notes about each photo - but will try and come back and add in more detail as to who painted what! You can see a full list of the artists in my post dated 12 April - listed at the beginning.

Impressed? You should be - it's a splendid exhibition and has set a high standard for what we can expect to see in the future.

You have a month left to see it. The exhibition closes on 4th October 2017.

I'm expecting great things from this space as a future place where botanical art can be exhibited in London. Not that every exhibition will be about botanical art - but I'm looking forward to the next one......

The artists

This is an international exhibition - the artists live in the UK and around the world. A number of the artists had travelled long distances to get to the preview. Indeed some had arrived having just got off a plane!

Here are just some of the artists with their paintings. I hope I've got all the names right! I'm afraid the low light levels meant that the names of the plants and descriptions on the labels were very difficult to pick up. (Feel free to tell me what the plant is if you're featured in this post.)

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