NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

'The Artist & the Botanical Collector' at the Museum of Sydney

7/8/2016

The Artist & the Botanical Collector: the Lost Works of Lovegrove & Bäuerlen - opens at the Museum of Sydney on 13 August 2016 until 20 November 2016.

The Artist & the Botanical Collector explores the partnership between

amateur Shoalhaven based artist Gertrude Lovegrove (1859-1961) and
botanical collector William Bäuerlen (1840- 1917)

Their joint endeavour was ambitious. They had ambitious plans to produce a multi-part publication in the late 19th century covering the native flora of New South Wales.

Kennedia prostrata, watercolour by Gertrude Lovegrove, c1891

Part 1 of the book Wildflowers of New South Wales by William Baeuerlen and Gertrude Lovegrove was published in Sydney by Angus & Robertson in January 1891. However it was only 12 pages long.

The link in the title of the book (and the image) is to the digitised version of the book in the Digital Collection of the National Library of Australia

The digitised version of "Wild Flowers of New South Wales" in the National Library of Australia

It has been intended that The Wild Flowers of New South Wales it would comprise 25 parts, part 1 of was published in Sydney. However further parts never came to fruition and there are now only a handful of copies of the first part are known to be held in Australian public collections.

The exhibition will feature

a collection of over 30 original wild flower watercolours by Lovegrove, that she prepared as illustrations for the lost Bäuerlen publication. These paintings are now held in Sydney Living Museums’ Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection at The Mint.
a brief survey of the range of wild flower publishing in colonial Australia.
an exploration of the connections of Lovegrove and Bäuerlen to Meroogal, a Sydney Living Museums property at Nowra on the NSW south coast.

NOTE: A substantial part of Bäuerlen's collections are held at:

Links: Encyclopedia of Australian Science - Biographical Entry: Baeuerlen, William (1840 - 1917)

Visit the Exhibition:

Where: Museum of Sydney on the site of first Government House (Cnr Bridge and Phillip streets, Sydney)
Admission: Free with Museum of Sydney entry (Adult $10 | Concession/child (under 15) $5 | Family $20 | Members free)
Transport: Public transport recommended. Museum of Sydney is one block back from Circular Quay which is serviced by trains, buses and ferries.

More Botanical Art Exhibitions in Australia

You can see more about other botanical art exhibitions in Australia on this page on this website Botanical Art Exhibitions in Australia and New Zealand

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'Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden' at Museum of Sydney

17/7/2016

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Two new botanical art exhibitions open soon at the Museum of Sydney.

Sydney Living Museums celebrates 200 years of the Royal Botanic Garden with:

Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden - opening 20 July 2016 until
30 October 2016
The Artist & the Botanical Collector: the Lost Works of Lovegrove & Bäuerlen - opening on 13 August 2016 until 20 November 2016 (more about this in August)

“These two striking exhibitions celebrate the fine tradition of botanical art in Australia, from early 19th century watercolours to contemporary artworks, and reveal the extraordinary plant life abundant across Sydney and New South Wales,”
Mark Goggin, Executive Director of Sydney Living Museums

Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden

Above (left to right): Annie Hughes, Banksia integrifolia (Coast Banksia) © Royal Botanic Garden Sydney Jenny Phillips, Magnolia grandiflora (Bull Bay Magnolia) © Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden is the culmination of a remarkable collection of contemporary botanical paintings developed by The Florilegium Society at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney.

The Florilegium was formed in 2005 to create this unique collection in time for the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney bicentenary. Thus this is an exhibition which is the result of over 10 years work by the Florilegium Society.

All artworks have been donated to the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust in recognition of the 200th anniversary. The Trust is the statutory body responsible for the management and stewardship of the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, the Domain, the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan and the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah.

The exhibition celebrates a renaissance in botanic art and

illustrates some of the most significant plants in the history of the living collections of the Royal Botanic Garden & Domain Trust.
includes over 80 botanical paintings by more than 60 international and Australian artists.
enables visitors to see the detail of familiar indigenous Australian plants and common garden flowers as well as more unfamiliar exotic species from Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe.
understand the influence of the Botanical Garden on the development of both horticulture and agriculture in the Sydney and New South Wales area after 1816.

The fragrant Magnolia grandiflora, now a familiar plant in Sydney, was introduced to NSW by William Macarthur in the 1830s, and was growing not only in the Royal Botanic Garden but also in large private gardens by the early 1840s. Vaucluse House in the eastern suburbs reputedly grew one of the largest magnolias in the colony, its striking flowers and dark foliage providing a dramatic border to the pleasure garden of William Charles Wentworth where he also grew exotic plant species from across the world.

As is usual with a lot of botanical art, the artwork reflects an ongoing cycle of growth, reproduction, decay and renewal. In doing so, the artwork portrays the magnificence of some the plants and blooms alongside the imperfect beauty of nature in minute detail as insects chew on leaves and blooms wilt and die.

The exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of Susan Maple-Brown AM

The Book of the Exhibition

The exhibition is complemented by the publication of a book about the development of the Florilegium.

Each of the 87 full-colour plates of a plant is complemented by it botanical description and text relating to its historical significance. It describes the plants’ role in the 200 year history of the Trust’s three Botanic Gardens.

The book is available in good bookstores and the Florilegium Garden Bookstore www.florilegium.com.au. (Hardback RRP$90 Softcover RRP $65) Enquiries to: [email protected] or Gil Teague 61 (0)2 9571 8222

Exhibition Preview and Talk

On 29 July, Members of the Sydney Museum and their guests are invited to join guest curator Colleen Morris and Beverly Allen, president and artist of the Florilegium Society at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney on a guided exhibition floor talk between 2.00pm and 3.00m.

Colleen Morris is a heritage consultant and former National Chair of the Australian Garden History Society and is the curator of Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden. She is also the author of Lost Gardens of Sydney.
Beverly Allen is the President of The Florilegium Society at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. She has been a professional botanical artist since 1998 and a teacher of the subject since 2004. Her paintings are published in The Highgrove Florilegium for the Prince of Wales’ Charitable Trust and are in the collections of the Botanic Gardens Trust Sydney, the Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Hunt Institute in Pittsburgh, the Isaac and Alisa Sutton Collection and the Shirley Sherwood Collection. She was awarded a Gold Medal at the Royal Horticultural Society Show in London in 2007, the inaugural Gold Medal 2011 and the Silver Medal 2014 for Botanical Art at the New York Botanicc Gardens.

Visit the Exhibitions:

Where: Museum of Sydney on the site of first Government House (Cnr Bridge and Phillip streets, Sydney)
Admission: Free with Museum of Sydney entry (Adult $10 | Concession/child (under 15) $5 | Family $20 | Members free)
Transport: Public transport recommended. Museum of Sydney is one block back from Circular Quay which is serviced by trains, buses and ferries.

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VIDEO: Harvard restores its famed Glass Flowers

20/5/2016

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This is the official Harvard video of the process used to provide a complete top-to-bottom facelift to the "Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants" housed in The Harvard Museum of Natural History.

The models are made entirely of glass often reinforced internally with a wire support. They were made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka who were nineteenth century glass artists from Bohemia

The Glass Flowers will reopen to the public on Saturday, May 21, 2016.

Photo of the Glass Flowers Collection prior to the Facelift - taken by Scott Edwards

Some rights reserved

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Exhibition: Crawling with Life: Flower drawings from the Henry Rogers Broughton Bequest

13/3/2016

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The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is home to one of the best UK based collections of botanical art from the past - after Kew, the RHS Lindley Library and the Natural History Museum.

Next week I'm going to be visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to view the exhibition of "Crawling with Life: Flower drawings from the Henry Rogers Broughton Bequest" which is on until Sunday 8 May 2016 in Gallery 14. Admission is free.

It comprises 17th and 18th century drawings and paintings by well respected and much admired botanical artists from the past.

'Primula auricula with a clouded yellow butterfly (Colias crocus)' by Barbara Regina Dietzsch 1706-1783. Bodycolour and watercolour on prepared black ground within gold border, on vellum

the works selected for this exhibition reveal not only a wide range of creatures and insects living amongst the flowers, but plants, either carnivorous or masters of mimicry, which trap insects for food and as a means of aiding pollination.

The exhibition includes paintings by

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 - 1717) and her tutor Jacob Marrel (1614-1681
the Dutch artist Jan van Huysum (1682-1749)
the German artists Johann Cristoph Dietzsch, 1710-1769), Barbara Regina Dietzsch (1706-1783) and Margareta Barbara Dietzsch (1726-1795)
Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770) and
the French artist and engraver Nicolas Robert (1614 - 1685)

You can see images from the bequest online if you search the collection online using the query "Henry Rogers Broughton".

This is a review of the exhibition Small works, Plants and Insects by the botanical artist and tutor Dianne Sutherland

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The Bauer Brothers & Natural History Museum Collections

21/11/2015

I've been updating the website for a significant number of aspects relating to the Natural History Museum. By the time I got to the end it seemed appropriate to highligth this via a post!

On the UK Exhibitions page, you'll now find a new section covering exhibitions at the Museum and an entry for the NEW exhibition in the Images of Nature Gallery.

Title: The Bauer Brothers: Masters of Scientific Illustration
Venue: Images of Nature Gallery (on the ground floor in the Blue Zone - see the Map of the NHM (pdf)
Dates: 7 November 2015 - 26 February 2017
Scope: illustrations by two of the most famous botanical and natural history artists of all time. Franz Bauer (1758-1840) was employed as "Botanick Painter to his Majesty" and drew all the new flowering plants that arrived at Kew Gardens from plant explorations all over the world. The younger brother Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826) spent most of his career as a natural history artist and travelled the world on various expeditions. He's best known as the botanical and natural history artist on an expedition to explore and record the coastline of Australia.
Book: Published in association with the exhibition The Bauer Brothers: Images of Nature

I've not been to see this exhibition as ye but plan to see it very soon. Anybody travelling to London over the Christmas/New Year period would be well advised to make time in their day to see it. I've seen some of their work before at the NHM and it's stunning!

The Bauer Brothers "excelled in learning the principles of botanical illustration according to the Linnaean system of classification. This technique typically depicts the entire plant in flower, but separately represents the bud and fruit, often dissected to show the internal structure."

On the Permanent Collections (UK) Page, the section highlighting the Natural History Museum now includes links to:

Women artists - more than 120 women artists have work in the Museum's Library and Archives
The Bauer brothers collection
Modern botanical illustration
The Linnaean collection
The Darwin collection

On the Herbaria, Seed Banks and Fungaria page, you'll find it now lists the range of botanical collections in the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum. You can see digital images of a lot of the herbarium speciments in the collections by searching the associated databases.

These include collections which came from:

George Clifford (1685-1760), a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant. This is significant because....

Linnaeus worked at Clifford's estate near Haarlem between 1735 and 1737. Linnaeus described the plants growing there and wrote the Hortus Cliffortianus

Paul Hermann - He was the Medical Officer to the Dutch East India Company in Sri Lanka between 1672 and 1677 and his collection of plants and flowers is one of the first major collections of the botany of the East Indies.
John Clayton - his specimens have considerable importance in botanical nomenclature.
Sir Hans Sloane - the noted physician, scientist and collector, the President of the Royal Society from 1727 to 1741 and the man behind one of the most signficant collections and gifts to the Museums.

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