NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art #4: Artists from Asia

16/11/2019

This is the fourth in my series of posts about artists who have artwork in the new exhibition Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens relates to Asia. The artists are from China, India, Japan, Korea, Philippines, and Thailand

Three posts in my series of SIX posts about the artists in the exhibition have been published previously:

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

Two more posts (to come) relate to:

#5 artists from South Africa
#6 artists from Australia and New Zealand

Mieko Ishikawa GM (2006) with her very famous painting of "Acorns from Brunei" and Flowering Cherries Prunus Pendula" owned by Shirley Sherwood. (Pictured in the Flora Japonica exhibition in 2016)

The exhibition celebrates 30 years of the Shirley Sherwood Collection - and is being exhibited in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens - which opened 11 years ago and has now received well over 1 million visitors.

The exhibition opened today and continues until until 15 March 2020. (note the opening and last entry times at the end)

I'm expecting it will get a lot more visitors with this new exhibition which comprises artwork from Shirley Sherwood's Collection of Contemporary Botanical Art which is the largest private collection in the world - with more than 1,000 artworks.

Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art
#4: Asian 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
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.

CHINA

Jinyong Feng
b.1925. Taught most of the contemporary botanical illustrators in China. He has also exhibited widely including at the Hunt and the Missouri Botanical Gardens. He is retired from a senior position at the Botanical Institute in Beijing.

Camellia chekiangoleosa 1994 (Contemporary Botanical Artists)
Camellia chrysantha (The Art of Plant Evolution)

Tai-li Zhang
b.1938. Worked as a botanical artist all her life. She trained at the School of Botanical Painting, Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica in Beijing from 1958-1960. She then worked for the next 35 years at the department of plant taxonomy in the Institute of Botany. She has exhibited her work in many exhibitions in China and also in Australia, the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the USA and the Everard Read Gallery in South Africa. She also exhibited in the 6th International Exhibition at the Hunt Institute. Over 1,000 of her drawings were reproduced in Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinae.

Paulownia elongata (Contemporary Botanical Artists)
Maidenhair Tree 1994 (Contemporary Botanical Artists)

INDIA

Damodar Lal Gurjar
b. 1958. Graduated from Rajasthan School of Arts, Jaipur in 1981. His botanical artwork featured in a solo exhibition, Enduring Perfection: Paintings by Damodar Lal Gurjar, at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in 2001. He has work included in A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks.

Nasturtium Tropaeolum (A Passion for Plants, pg 93)

Thakur Ganga (Rai Sahib) Singh (1895-1970)
Born in India. He joined the Dehra Dun Forest Institute in 1911 and served as a Senior Artist for 30 years until his retirement in 1945. In 1931 he took long leave for a year and travelled to London for formal training as an artist at the Slade School of Art. He was made Rai Sahib ( a title of honour) for his contribution to art. Court painter to Yadhavindra Singh, Maharajah of Patiala. Ganga Singh was engaged by the Maharajah in 1942 to reproduce his collected flora in watercolour drawings. He became a permanent member of His Highness' staff and painted over four hundred watercolours over a period of twenty years.

Tiger Lily Lilium lancifolium (A Passion for Plants, pg 212)

When I was a schoolgirl I visited Pakistan just after partition and spent some wonderful months exploring the Himalayas of the North West Frontier Province, close to the border with Kashmir, I will never forget the spectaucyalr drifts of delphiniums flowing down the mountains, the alpine streams and high valleys dotted with orchids and lilies. As a budding botanist I scrambled up the mountains with my pony, collecting and pressing plants, which I eventually took to Kew.
Shirley Sherwood - in her profile of Thakur (Rai Sahib) Singh in "A Passion for Plants"

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Trees, Tropical Plants & Theatre in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art (October 2018 - March 2019)

12/10/2018

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On Monday I went to see the four new botanical art exhibitions at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens. I'll be reviewing them all individually on this blog in future but today I thought I'd give you a taster of what can be seen - so you start planning a visit!

The four new exhibitions run from 6 October 2018 – 17 March 2019 and have a couple of over-arching themes

Orchids and tropical plants

Orchids and tropical plants are featured in the first two exhibitions

Rankafu: Masterpieces of Japanese Woodblock Prints of Orchids (Galleries 1 and 2) - this is the first exhibition as you walk in through the main entrance
Botanical Theatre: The Art of Pandora Sellars (1936-2017) (Galleries 3 and 4) - This is very likely to be extremely popular with all experienced botanical artists and aspiring students. Her works features a lot of tropical plants and orchids (and cyclamens, lilies and arum) and a lot of foliage.

The Botanical Theatre of watercolour paintings by Pandora Sellars

Mark Frith: A Legacy of Ancient Oaks (Gallery 5) 7 of the 20 oaks on display

Trees

The tree theme is particularly relevant to the Charter of the Forest in its 800th anniversary year.

Mark Frith: A Legacy of Ancient Oaks (Gallery 5) - in the large square central gallery
Trees: Delight in the Detail (Gallery 6) - the first exhibition you encounter when approaching from the Marianne North Gallery.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: This is one of the best combination of exhibitions that I've seen here. There's a lot of excellent quality art to look at - I found it quite overwhelming - and it's really difficult to take it all in on one visit. So think very seriously about:

planning enough time for your visit
or maybe even planning more than one visit!

I know one artist who has already visited twice on one day and wants to go again!

PS You will need a magnifier or a loupe to properly appreciate some of the paintings in these exhibitions. If you forget yours, you can borrow one from reception.

Rankafu: Masterpieces of Japanese Woodblock Prints of Orchids

View of the exhibition of Rankafu wood block prints of orchids

These impressive and very beautiful woodblock prints of orchids are based on the watercolours of Zuigetsu Ikeda. They were first published in 1946.

Rankafu means as ‘Orchid Flower Album’. These prints are on loan from the Collection of Stephen Kirby and this is first major exhibition of the Rankafu woodblock colour prints outside of Japan.

Woodblock printing of this quality is technically demanding and the exhibition includes a display explaining how they are produced.

Botanical Theatre: The Art of Pandora Sellars

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - This is an exhibition NOT TO BE MISSED.
It's unlikely you'll ever see its like again.

Many experienced botanical artists will need no introduction to the late Pandora Sellars. She has been described by Shirley Sherwood as “One of the most important botanical artists of all time[1]” and “the best leaf painter ever”. Others would characterise her as being one of the best botanical artists when it comes to tackling a complex composition which shows off the botanical features of a plant to best effect.

However very few will have ever seen more than a few examples of her artwork in person.

This exhibition is unique and a wonderful opportunity to

view a retrospective of c. 50 artworks and items produced from her art - just a small percentage of the artwork she produced over a period of nearly 40 years.
note how her artwork developed over the years - between 1972 and 2007
see the scope of her work - from botanical illustration commissions for Kew and other publishers to botanical artworks produced for her own pleasure.

Those who do not know about Pandora Sellars can read all about her and her botanical artwork in About Pandora Sellars (1936-2017) my dedicated page on this website.

The artwork is on loan from:

Kew Collection (17 works)
Shirley Sherwood Collection (8 works)
RHS Lindley Library (1 work)
Cyclamen Society (7 works)
Postal Museum (5 works)
Private Collections (12 works - plus her painting materials
Plus a selection of books containing botanical illustrations by Pandora Sellars

Mark Frith: A Legacy of Oaks

Six of the Veteran Oaks drawn by Mark Frith - in Gallery 5

This is an exhibition of a series of 20 highly intricate, large-scale graphite drawings of Britain’s most characterful veteran oaks, many of which are more than 1,000 years. The trees are shown in winter - devoid of all leaves and new growth.

They were drawn by Mark Frith who studied Fine Art at Bristol before becoming a BAFTA award-winning filmmaker before starting to draw his first tree in 2011.

The series were commissioned by publisher, poet, and philanthropist, Felix Dennis. After he died, ten trees were gifted to the Kew Collection and ten are now owned by the Heart of England Forest - founded by Felix Dennis.

Trees: Delight in the Detail

View of "Palms" - one small section of "Trees: Delight in Detail"

This exhibition leans very much towards looking at the details of trees rather than the tree as a whole - and different approaches used to paint the details of trees.

The artwork represents trees from all over the world - from temperate areas and the tropics - and the detail of their leaves, cones, flowers, fruits, seeds and nuts.

Sizes vary enormously according to real life but also due to enlargement employed to show the detail of a particular aspect.

The artwork comes from the Shirley Sherwood Collection - collected from artists from all over the world. Artists include:

UK: Jenny Brasier, Brigid Edwards, Annie Farrer (2 works), Flappy Lane Fox, Katherine Manisco, Rory McEwen (2 works), Margaret Mee (2 works), Barbara Oozerally, Jess Shepherd, Julie Small (2 works)
Australia: Jenny Phillips
Austria: Jakob Demus
Brazil: Maria Alice de Rezende, Alvaro Nunes (7 works)
Germany: Regine Hagedorn,
India: Arundhati Vartak
Japan: Mariko Ikeda, Mieko Ishikawa, Kimuyo Maruyama (2 works), Michiko Toyota
Philippines: Emmanuel Cordova
Russia: Olga Makrushenko
South Africa: Gill Condy, Ann Schweizer, Vicki Thomas
Thailand: Phansakdi Chakkaphak
USA: Monika de Vries Gohlke; Anne Ophelia Dowden, Ingrid Finnan, Hillary Parker,

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