golden age of botanical art

The Golden Age of Botancial Art

The Golden Age of Botanical Art, by Martyn Rix tells the story of brave and intrepid explorers and the many professional artists who recorded, for posterity, the flora discovered on their expeditions.

Neoregelia margaretae

Neoregelia margaretae collected in the Amazon and painted by Margaret Mee in 1979, from a plant cultivated by Roberto Burle Marx. Margaret Mee (1909-1988) specialised in painting plants from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and used her paintings to draw attention to the destruction of the rainforest.

Rhododendron lacteum

Lilian Snelling (1879-1972) was one of the most elegant botanical artists of the twentieth century and whilst working as chief artist for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine between 1922 and 1952, painted 41 species of Primula and no less than 110 species of Rhododendron. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants and has been published continuously since 1787.

Lilian Snelling’s study of Rhododendron lacteum for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.

Lilium auratum (W. H. Fitch)

The nineteenth century botanists and Kew Directors William Jackson Hooker and his son Joseph Dalton Hooker relied heavily on the artist Walter Hood Fitch (1817-1892), who illustrated numerous books and periodicals for them. In 1845 Joseph named a Polynesian plant, Fitchia nutans for him.

Illustration - W. H. Fitch’s painting of Lilium auratum for Elwes’ The genus Lilium.

Neomarica caerulea

Joseph Paxton’s greatest claim to fame is probably the construction of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibtion held in London in 1850, but his extraordinary achievements also included a substantial body of published work, and from 1834 to 1849 oversaw the publication of 16 volumes of Paxton’s Magazine of Botany.

Illustration - Neomarica caerulea from Paxton’s Magazine of Botany.

Various auriculas by Redouté

Redouté’s Choix des plus belles fleurs (1827-1833) contains pictures of popular garden flowers and is an interesting record of what was cultivated at the time, and the state of development of some flowers such as pansies and sweet peas.

Illustration - Various auriculas by Pierre-Joseph Redouté from Choix des plus belles fleurs.

‘Dahlia double’ by Redouté

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840) is probably the best known flower painter of all time, living and working in Paris during the age of the Enlightenment, at a time when the city was the scientific, philosophical and cultural centre of Europe.

Illustration - ‘Dahlia double’ by Pierre-Joseph Redouté from Choix des plus belles fleurs.

Lastrea dilatata (now Dryopteris dilitata)

Mosses and ferns were popular during the nineteenth century, and became increasingly sought after following the publication of Thomas Moore’s work in 1855. Moore’s book was ‘nature-printed’, a technique which involved applying ink to the actual plant specimen, which was then passed through a press with the paper.

Illustration - Lastrea dilatata (now Dryopteris dilitata) from Moore’s The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland.

Giant gymea lily (Doryanthes excelsa)

Plants such as Doryanthes excelsa collected on expedition in Australia soon began to flower in gardens in England and France in the nineteenth century. Doryanthes excelsa flowered in the garden at Woodhall, Lanarkshire in 1826.

Illustration - Doryanthes excelsa (the giant gymea lily) painted by E. Weddell.

Herbarium Specimen Painting

Rachel Pedder-Smith’s painting of specimens of different plant families from Kew’s Herbarium. The entire painting runs to over 5 m (16½ ft) long and features one herbarium specimen from each family of flowering plants, in their evolutionary sequence, as revealed by study of their DNA.

The Taj Mahal at Agra

Marianne North (1830-1890) was a remarkable Victorian artist, travelling the world and producing over 800 paintings over 13 years, which are housed in her gallery at Kew. Her painting of the Taj Mahal at Agra was produced during the year she spent in India from September 1877.

A selection of illustrations

Some of the over 250 rare, or previously unpublished images from Kew's Collection that appear in The Golden Age of Botanical Art.