Private View of "Brazil - a Powerhouse of Plants"

Last night I attended the Private View of "Brazil - a Powerhouse of Plants" which is currently on display at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. The exhibition continues until 29 August 2016.

This exhibition focuses on plants of Brazil in general and botanical artwork made by Margaret Mee in particular. It also includes paintings by other artists - including the Margaret Mee Scholars - of which more tomorrow.

As usual, it comprises images from the Kew Collection and the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

View of the large gallery and the exhibition of paintings by Margaret Mee

Richard Deverell, the Director of Kew Gardens introduced the exhibition

The Director of Kew Gardens, Richard Deverell, emphasised the fact that Brazil is the most floralistically diverse country in the world. Some 46,000 species can be found growing in the country of which about half are endemic to Brazil and grow nowhere else.  By way of comparison, the UK has about 2,000 species.

The Royal Botanic Gardens have had very strong connections with Brazil for quite a while. (The Kew website highlights the number of projects Kew is involved within tropical America)

• The first Flora of Brazil was published in collaboration with Kew in 2010 and there are plans in hand for the production of an encyclopaedia of the complete flora of Brazil.
• Current joint projects include creating a seed bank.
• Kew is collaborating on Reflora - a project to a virtual herbarium to display the images of Brazilian plants that are housed in foreign herbaria. More than 200,000 Herbarium specimens from Kew have been digitised and are now part of the Virtual Flora project
• Since 2012, Brazilian scientists have been working at Kew and there are some 35 presently working in the laboratories.
• the Margaret Mee Scholarship programme has funded the training and development of botanical illustrators from Brazil

​He also highlighted now botanical illustrators of the past used to pursue their plants with 'steely determination' and how Margaret Mee used to pack a revolver along with her paints and brushes on her earliest trips into the Amazon Rain Forest.

He applauded the exhibition as presenting the chance to explore the range and diversity of Brazilian flora - without the need to pack a revolver!

The organisation of the images between the different galleries

Shirley Sherwood highlighted the fact that the exhibition includes both the very first painting in Brazil done by Margaret Mee - the Cannonball tree - and the very last - the Moonflower Cactus.

She described the contents of the different galleries and what the artists in each contributed to the overall exhibition. 

• Gallery 1 includes paintings by the early explorers including Sydney Parkinson who was one of the artists on the Endeavour.
• Gallery 2 which features comparisons between past artists and those of the present - which is a feature of Shirley Sherwood's books and a number of exhibitions at Kew. It serves to highlight just how good contemporary artists are!
• Gallery 3 includes paintings by the Demonte family who were a dynasty of botanical painters in Brazil
• Gallery 4 highlights the work of the award winning artist Alvaro Núñez. His paintings focus on the plants of the savanna, Amazonia and Pantanal.  
• Gallery 5 - the large gallery - focuses on the paintings of Margaret Mee
• Gallery 6 - contains the paintings of the Margaret Mee Scholars (Botanical Artists)

Alvaro Núñez with three of his botanical paintings in watercolour

There were lots of people from all over the world at the PV including:

• Alvaro Nunes - one of the leading contemporary Brazilian botanical artist. One of the galleries provides an exhibition of his simply stunning paintings. He specialises in painting plants from all the different ecosystems within Brazil.
• Ruth L A Stiff - who is the curator of international exhibitions at Kew and wrote the book "The Flowering Amazon" about Margaret Mee's paintings. The book accompanied the exhibition of her paintings in 16 different venues across the USA
• Cynthia Rice ASBA was visiting from the USA and was able to meet Shirley Sherwood
• Annette de Jonquieres who is the first Danish botanical artist that I've ever met!
• Gustavo Marigo from Brazil who is the 2016 Margaret Mee Scholar (of which more tomorrow)

Cynthia Rice, Treasurer of the ASBA and Dr Shirley Sherwood with one of her paintings by Margaret Mee