NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Francis Bauer: the first botanical illustrator at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

11/12/2019

Today is the anniversary of the death of Francis (Franz) Bauer FRS FLS at the age of 82, on 11th December 1840.

Francis Bauer was born an Austrian. He was born in in Feldsberg in Lower Austria (now Valtice in the Czech Republic) on 14 March 1758. However he spent 50 years at Kew Gardens - illustrating plants.

He visited London in 1788 when he was 30 and met Sir Joseph Banks who had a passion for botany and was extremely pleased to meet Bauer - probably at his home at 32 Soho Square. He has by this time realised that finding a competent botanical painter was far more difficult than finding an engraver.

In 1789, Bank appointed Bauer as a natural history illustrator with an annual annuity for life of £300. Bauer subsequently settled permanently in Kew and became the first resident plant illustrator at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

His title was the 'Botanick Painter to His Majesty' for his work at Kew Gardens. A subsequent complication was that his paintings were owned by the crown which gave them to the British Museum! They're now in the Natural History Museum - with just one orchid painting at Kew! However the Natural History Museum has an excellent website where you can see many of them.

Thumbnails of works by Francis Bauer in the Natural History Museum

He is very well known for

his use of the microscope to study and make meticulous and very impressive studies of dissections and pollen grains. He observed nuclei in plant cells in 1802 and began to study pollen diversity
painting a number of illustrations of plants of the genus Strelitzia from South Africa between 1818 - 1820
his studies of orchids while working with John Lindley. He starts to publish Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants in 1830.
his painted record of "Drawings of Plants Cultivated in the Royal Garden at Kew" (1790-1820) - which is now kept in four different institutions but with very little at Kew!

If you want to see very good reproductions of his paintings, I highly recommend The Bauers Joseph, Franz & Ferdinand: An Illustrated Biography by Hans Walter Lack (see end) which has excellent and large reproductions of his work in what is a very large, comprehensive and heavy book! I got my copy from the Bodleian bookshop when I went to see the exhibit of Ferdinand Bauer's colour scheme.

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Australasian Exhibit in 'Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art' at Kew

10/12/2019

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The Australasian exhibit within Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art is the first one you come to as you go through the double doors from the reception area of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. into Gallery 1.

It covers contemporary botanical art by both Australian and New Zealand artists past and present. You can read more about the artists in my earlier blog post Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #6: Australasian Artists

Below you can see photos of the paintings in the exhibition - with names of the plants, credits for the artists and explanations of and/or any stories I know about the plants and/or artists!

Australia and New Zealand have strong artists traditions with flourishing art and conservation societies. We had a botanical exhibition here... of a Florilegium of contemporary plant portraits demo Sydney's three botanical gardens, as well as two smaller 'Down Under' shows with paintings by Australian and New Zealand.
Introduction to the Australasian Gallery

Paintings by Paul Jones, Susannah Blaxill, Annie Hughes and Julie Nettleton

The first paintings you see on your left as you walk through the door contain some stunners.

The small gem-like painting of Agapanthus is by Susannah Blaxill. It's painted in watercolour and gouache on (if I recall correctly) some Rory McEwen vellum which she painted for the Rory McEwen exhibition in the gallery in 2013. I seem to recall there's a story that she had never painted on vellum before and was petrified of making a mistake. As you can clearly see she didn't - and if you take a very big magnifier and look very carefully you can see the tiny hatching strokes she used. It's an absolutely beautiful painting - a real gem!
Above it is a small painting of Violas, painted in acrylic by Paul Jones. It's been in quite a few exhibitions including "A new Flowering" exhibition at the Ashmolean in 2005
The large painting of an enlarged white Camellia japonica 'Elegans champagne' on white paper (800mm x 760mm) is by Annie Hughes GM (RHS: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017). Annie won her first RHS Gold Medal for a suite of eight paintings of Camellias in 2011 and the painting was acquired from the exhibition at the Royal Botanical Garden in Sydney in March 2012.
The painting on the right is of Styphelia triflora by Julie Nettleton who won an RHS Gold Medal and 'Best Painting in Show' for an exhibit of Grass Trees in 2016. It has an amazing full page image in the book which allows you to see properly all the paintings of parts.

Paintings by Bronwyn van de Graaff , Celia Rosser and Beverly Allen.

The next three paintings speak Australia to me.

The Xanthorrhoea johnsonii Grass Tree is by Bronwyn van de Graaff which has a great composition.
The Banksia serrata Saw Banksia (1995) is by Celia Rosser OAM PhD (Hon.) who one is of the world's finest living botanical artists. She dedicated herself to producing watercolour paintings of every Banksia species every known Banksiaover 25 years. These were published as The Banksias, a three-volume series of monographs (1981, 1988 and 2000). This banksia requires you to take a magnifier with you if you want to see the level of detail she has achieved. It gets a full page in the book - but you need to get up close and personal with this painting! (You can see why in this blog post)
The Strelitzia nicolai by Beverly Allen GM (RHS 2007, NYBG 2010) is amazing and is the feature image of the exhibition. It's also used on the cover of the book produced in association with the exhibition.

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TALK: History of Botanical Art (8th December at Kew)

4/12/2019

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Next Sunday, Christopher Mills, former head of Kew’s Libraries, Art and Archives (2006-2015) and the curator of The Botanical Treasury (2016), will be giving at talk at Kew about the birth of botanical art and its development through the years.

Image: crop of Regine Hagedorn's painting of Roses (2001)

Details of the Talk

Title: History of Botanical Art
Venue: The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens
Date: Sunday 8th December 2019
Time: 1pm
Admission: Free - with admission to Kew Gardens
More information: https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/history-botanical-art-talk

Notes:
The Shirley Sherwood Gallery closes at 3pm so if you also want to have a good look at the current exhibition - Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art - I suggest you get there in the morning. There's a lot to see!

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Pre-reading!

If you'd also like to do some prep. / pre-reading around the history of botanical art before the talk to get some context, I suggest you take a look at the 'The History of Botanical Art and Illustration' section on my website which shares information about:

What is botanical art and illustration
Books about the history of botanical art
Online galleries of collections of historical botanical and herbal art
Past Masters - organised by countries and timeline plus individual pages for leading botanical artists of the past
Famous Asian Botanical Artists (600-1900)
20th Century Botanical Artists
Landmark Publications - Herbals
Landmark publications - Florilegium
Botanical Photographers

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NEW: The Shirley Sherwood Collection has a website!

27/11/2019

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The NEW Shirley Sherwood Collection website - Home Page

Last night Shirley Sherwood announced that the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Botanical Art now has a website. The URL is http://shirleysherwood.com - which I'm sure all fans of botanical art will want to bookmark

I've known about it for some time but also knew that the natural time for a public announcement would be at last night's Private View for the "Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art" exhibition at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens. So today is the right time to share with everybody else!

Below I'll describe what you can find on the website and how to access the different sections and pages within the website.

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Review: 'Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art' at Kew Gardens

24/11/2019

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The new exhibition Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens is very definitely a LANDMARK exhibition of contemporary botanical art - and one woman's dedication and commitment. It's significant in size and scope and is very impressive to the point of being quite overwhelming.

I'm very happy to highly recommend it to all those interested in botanical art and/or watercolour painting and/or plants and nature in general.

The current exterior of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art

I think it's the first time in the 11 year history of the gallery that the entire gallery has been given over to paintings from The Shirley Sherwood Collection. Normally exhibitions on a theme have been a mix of artwork (and/or other items) from the Kew Collection and the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

However, this exhibition is rather different. It celebrates

30 years of collecting contemporary botanical art - via purchase from galleries, auction houses and direct from artists, commissions and gifts from some artists
more than 1,000 artworks collected - in what is now by far the largest private collection of botanical art in the world; and
a new book about the collection! (review to follow tomorrow)

As such this exhibition has a much more personal feel. It's also organised by geographical area - in terms of where the artists live rather than where the plant comes from - with notes from Dr Sherwood about how she met artists in the different countries - which provides insight into how the collection developed over time.

(Note: It struck me that it would be interesting to see another exhibition - with artwork organised by plant family. I don't think we've had one since The Art of Plant Evolution).

I've never ever seen so many artworks in the galleries - and one senses from the number of artworks in the exhibition that it's been very difficult to prune the list of artworks that Dr Sherwood wanted to include in the exhibition!

The net effect is that the exhibition is quite overwhelming - meaning it takes quite a long time to get round and do it justice!

Gallery 1: Australasia - Paintings by Paul Jones, Susannah Blaxill, Annie Hughes and Julie Nettleton

This is only an overview. As I was walking around I very quickly decided that it would be absolutely impossible to do it justice in one blog post/review. Over lunch at the Pavilion Restaurant I tried to work out what to do. I've decided to repeat what I did with the lists of the artists whose work is on display - and do each gallery and geographical area in turn.

As a minimum (i.e. there may be more!), I will review each gallery exhibition in turn - one country or continent each week. I'm not quite sure of the order yet - maybe the one I followed as I viewed the exhibition late last week. For the record:

Gallery 1 - Australasia
Gallery 2 - Europe
Gallery 3 - North America
Gallery 4 - Latin America
Gallery 5 - Britain
Gallery 6 - South Africa and Asia

I hope to be able to add into these reviews some photos of the artists who will be at the private view evening next week.

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Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #6: Australasian Artists

18/11/2019

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Find out about the Australasian artists - from Australia and New Zealand - whose artwork is now on display in Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art, the new exhibition at Kew Gardens celebrating 30 years of collecting 1,000+ artworks from all over the world for the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art.

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art is now open at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens and will be on display until 15th March 2020.

Below is one small gem which you can see in the exhibition.

One of the most beautiful small paintings you will ever see. Agapanthus by Susannah Blaxill painted on McEwen vellum for the McEwen exhibition at SSG in 2013

This post "Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #6: Australasian Artists" is the sixth in my series of posts about the artists in the exhibition.

Previous posts have travelled around the world

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #1: British Artists
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #2: North and Latin American Artists (USA, Canada Brazil and Mexico)
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #3: European Artists (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain and Sweden)
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #4: Artists from Asia (China, India, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand)
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #5: South African Artists

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art
#5(a): Australian Artists

Below you can find:

the names of artists whose work is displayed - with a link to their website embedded in their name (or a link to a dedicated page on my website for some of the deceased artists)
a short profile of each artist - focusing on their achievements. Those who have achieved more get longer profiles!
the names of the plants in their artwork which has been selected for the exhibition. Where plants have been featured in previous books by Dr Sherwood this is noted next to the name.

Also noted is the number of artworks each artist has in the collection.

Strelitzia nicolai by Beverley Allen - photographed during the 'Down Under II' exhibition in 2018 at SSG

Beverly Allen GM (RHS 2007, NYBG 2010)
(6 works in the SS Collection)
b. 1945 in Sydney, Australia. BA in Fine Arts from Sydney University. A graphic designer who began studying botanical art in 1997, became a botanical artist in 1998 and now exhibits and teaches masterclasses internationally. Has exhibited annually at the RBG Sydney ‘Botanica’ Exhibition since 1999, and exhibits internationally. Exhibited at the 11th International exhibition at the Hunt in 2004. Won an RHS Gold in 2007 for eight watercolour paintings of Epiphyllum. In 2010, she was awarded the inaugural Gold Medal for Botanical Art by the New York Botanic Gardens. Her work is in many major collections including Kew, the RHS Lindley Library, the Hunt, Highgrove and Transylvania Florilegiums. and the Shirley Sherwood and Alisa and Isaac Sutton Collections. It can also be seen in a large number of publications. She is the Co-Founder and President of the Florilegium Society at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Strelitzia 2003 Strelitzia nicolai (on the cover of the book about the exhibition)
Pomegranates and seed pods of Gloriosa 2011

Susannah Blaxill
b. 1954 in Armidale, New South Wales. She has been painting full time since 1985. She's recognised as being one of the world’s leading botanical artists specialising in watercolour (on white and black paper), pencil and recently in charcoal. A lot of people have seen her Beetroot and request to see it. I investigated why in my blog post Susannah Blaxill's beetroot and a magnifying glass (do read it to see why you MUST bring a magnifying glass to this exhibition!). This is an interview with Susannah Blaxill

Beetroot (Contemporary Botanical Artists)
Agapanthus 2012 (Painted especially for McEwen Exhibition SSG 2013) - see image at the top of this post

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Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #5: South African Artists

17/11/2019

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Find out about the South African artists whose artwork has been selected for display in the new exhibition Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens - which celebrates 30 years of collecting 1,000+ artworks for the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art.

This is the fifth in my series of posts about the artists in the exhibition.

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #1: British Artists
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #2: North and Latin American Artists (USA, Canada Brazil and Mexico)
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #3: European Artists
Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #4: Artists from Asia
today's post is about artists from South Africa
the final post is about artists from Australia and New Zealand

This retrospective exhibition of Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art is at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens. It opened yesterday and continues until 15th March 2020.

Margaret de Villiers with her RHS Gold Medal winning Cape Ericas in 2016

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art
#5: South African Artists

Below you can find:

the names of artists whose work is displayed - with a link to their website embedded in their name (or a link to a dedicated page on my website for some of the deceased artists)
a short profile of each artist - focusing on their achievements. Those who have achieved more get longer profiles!
the names of the plants in their artwork which has been selected for the exhibition. Where plants have been featured in previous books by Dr Sherwood this is noted next to the name.

Also noted is the number of artworks each artist has in the collection.

Fay Anderson
(3 works in the SS Collection)
b. in 1931 in Lahore in what was then northern India and is now Pakistan. Educated in India and England. She emigrated to South Africa in 1952 and now Lives in Cape Town. Studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town achieving a Diploma in Fine Arts in 1955. She has always worked as a freelance botanical artist. In 2013, she was awarded the Kirstenbosch Biennale Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her very considerable contribution to South African botany and raising awareness of South African flora in the last 50 years. Fay’s work is represented in a number of important collections including the Hunt Institute and Missouri Botanical Gardens, St Louis in the (USA), The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, London (UK); South African National Biodiversity Institute in Pretoria and Cape Town as well as the Shirley Sherwood Collection at Kew Gardens. Has contributed illustrations to many different publications and two of her illustrations also appear in Blunt and Sterne’s The Art of Botanical Illustration. Contributed work to two exhibits by the Botanical Research Institute South Africa which were awarded two RHS Gold Medals in 1980 and 1984.

Nivenia stokoei (A Passion for Plants, page 30)

Sibonelo Chiliza
Born in 1979 in Mtwalume (near Port Shepstone). In 2000 he enrolled at the Durban University of Technology to study Textile Design and Technology. In 2004 he spent a three-month internship at the Durban Botanical Gardens, followed by a six-month internship at the National Herbarium. Subsequently employed to manage the scanning and databasing of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) Pretoria art collection. He has worked on images for three books, taken part in several group exhibitions and won awards in the three SANBI Kirstenbosch Biennials that he has participated in. He also now has work in the Shirley Sherwood Collection. (1 work in the collection)

Paint brush lily 2012 Scadoxus puniceus

Gillian Condy GM (with SANBI 1986, 1990, 1993, 1997, 1999, )
(5 works in the SS collection)
b.1952 in Nairobi. Grew up in England. Diploma in graphics and scientific illustration at Middlesex Polytechnic plus MA by project ('British Poisonous Plants') at Royal College of Art. Recently retired as the resident botanical artist for the South African National Botanical/Biodiversity Institute (1983-2017). Has participated in over 180 group exhibitions worldwide and contributed to numerous publications including Curtus's Botanical Magazine. Awarded the Jill Smythies Award from the Linnean Society (1990) plus seven RHS Gold Medals and two Gold Medals at the Kirstenbosch Biennale. Exhibited at the 7th International at the Hunt. One of the founding members of the Botanical Artists Association of Southern Africa. (see also A new aloe species named after Gillian Condy. Invited to contribute to the Highgrove and Transylvanian Florilegia under the auspices of the Prince's Trust and features in the Sydney Florilegium. Her work is also in numerous private collections. This is an article about her.

Turk's Cap Aloe 2007/16 Aloe peglerae - see below

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