Lucian Freud - paintings of plants and gardens

Lucian Freud painted plants and gardens as well as people and animals.

I was reminded of this last Friday when I saw Two Plants at Tate Britain.

Two Plants Lucian Freud

Today I decided to review the paintings of plants and gardens by Lucian Freud as I'd never looked at them all.

Below you can find an inventory - in a timeline - with

• notes about their context and location
• links to where you can see them and 
• quotes by people - including Freud himself - about his paintings of plants and why he did them.

In between are my photos of the above painting after I gave it my usual nose to canvas inspection..... I found the way in which he applied paint to very interesting.

All we need now is an exhibition dedicated to his paintings of plants and trees. There's certainly a lot of paintings to pick from!

Paintings of plants and gardens by Lucian Freud

"The subject matter has always been dictated by the way my life has gone. I noticed that when I was under particular strain, I didn't feel so like staring at people or bodies all day." It was at times like these that the palm, the Egyptian Book, thistles, cyclamens, buttercups, substituted for sitters. Seeing through the skin

You can see his plant paintings in The Lucian Freud Archive.

The links below are to

• either Bridgeman Images which represent his work for licensing purposes.
• or where paintings can be viewed in Galleries (if possible)

All are oil paintings unless otherwise indicated

The ones I know about are:

• 1939 - Still Life with Cactus and Flowerpots - two cacti
• 1944 - Palm Tree - a drawing - pastel chalk and ink on paper
• 1944 - The Painter's room - features what looks like a yucca
• 1944 - Quinces - sold at auction by Sotheby's but not in the Lucian Freud Archive
• 1946 - Daffodils and celery
• 1946 - Man with a Thistle (Tate) - a self portrait with a thistle stem
• 1946 - Unripe Tangerine (Pallant House Gallery) - not included in the archive
• 1947 - Lemon Sprig - two lemons and a sprig leaves
• 1947 - Small Zimmerlinde - foliage
• 1947 - Quince - Drawing conté, coloured pencil, pencil and ink on paper
• 1947 - Still Life with Green Lemon a leaf, a lemon and a slice of a Freud profile
• 1950 - Strawberries - in a box with some leaves
• 1951 - Balcony Still Life - Looks like a very dry neglected yucca; maybe the plant from the Painter's Room putting in a reappearance?
• 1951 - Interior in Paddington (Walker Art Gallery) - includes the figure of Harry Diamond (1924 - 2009); the yucca is now bigger and older and makes sense of the slightly odd appearance in Balcony Still Life (See article about the painting)

"one of the most memorable potted plants in the history of modern art"Lawreence Gowring about the Yucca which appears in Freud's paintings

• 1953 - Bananas (Southampton City Art Gallery) 
• 1953 - Plants in Jamaica - meticulous observation of exotic Caribbean vegetation at the Goldeneye villa of Ian and Ann Fleming on Jamaica, where Freud stayed during a visit in 1952-1953. Sold for £481K in 2011

For Freud, Jamaica's relaxed and vibrant island culture represented a welcome escape from the turmoil surrounding his private life back in London. This was reflected in the two paintings that he produced whilst he was there, Bananas(Collection of Southampton City Art Gallery) and Plants in Jamaica; both of which were conspicuously devoid of any human presence. "I noticed I switched away from people when my life was under particular strain," recalled Freud. "I preferred working in complete isolation. Not using people is like taking a deep breath of fresh air" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Venice, Museo Correr, Lucian Freud, 2005, p. 35).

The tropical beauty of the verdant Caribbean landscape provided Freud with a fresh and fertile source of inspiration for his painting. Perhaps more importantly, the painting en plein air that it required brought to his work an unprecedented immediacy and technical vitality that Freud developed over the course of the next ten years into an altogether more fluid approach to both subject and technique. 
Sotheby's Catalogue note for Plants in Jamaica | Auction 2011

Intimately observed down to its smallest, naturalistic detail, the all over composition of Plants in Jamaica is delicately articulated in modulating tones of radiant greens and browns. Using the finest sable brushes, in this work, Freud provides a mesmerizing visual manifestation of his renowned proclamation that: "The picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life." (Lucian Freud, Some Thoughts on Painting, July 1954)

• 1955 Cyclamen - a stem, a flower and three leaves on a wall at Coombe Priory bought by and his second wife, Caroline Blackwood as a place where she could stay when he was in town. One of only two Freud murals now in existence (see Wall Flower and next item)

My cacti and succulent drawings - in coloured pencils

Coloured pencil drawings of Cacti and succulents for Florum 2014
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This is my contribution to Florum 2014 - an exhibition celebrating plant life which opens to the public on Saturday.  My drawings in coloured pencils are:

• top left: Triangulation  - this was exhibited at the Society of Botanical Artists in 2011
• top right: Sansevaria Surprise - the common names for this plant include many variations on 'tongue' e.g. mother-in-law's tongue, devil's tongue, jinn's tongue, snake tongue plus bow string hemp and snake plant.  It seems to me they were coined by people who had never seen the flowers!
• Middle left: Grey, green and pink in Yuma - inspired by a coffee stop on my 2006 road trip (see below)
• Middle right: Echevaria Laui - looks pale grey but actually displays incredibly subtle colours
• Bottom left: Aloe Polyphylla - it has an amazing spiral pattern
• Bottom right: Tesselation #2 (Agave Victoriae) - a reworking of one of my original drawings of this plant.
• Bottom middle: Aloe Karasbergensis - very stripy!

All works are for sale at the exhibition which is open 6th - 13th September (10.00am - 5.00pm) at the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve.  I'll be stewarding on Sunday if anybody wants to come and visit and meet me! Below are links to my previous reviews of the Florum exhibition

• 2013: Florum 10th Anniversary Exhibition - review
• 2012: Review: Florum 2012
• 2011: Exhibition Review: Florum 2011 - in Sevenoaks

Incidentally after a walk around the reserve yesterday, I can highly recommend it to anybody wanting to draw birdlife, wildlife and wild flowers.  I shall be returning to spend more time there.

I've been drawing cacti and succulents for some time - ever since a 2,000 mile road trip in 2006 from Santee in Southern California to Albuquerque, New Mexico (New Mexico sketches) via Arizona (Arizona sketches).  You can read about my trip in Road Trip #1 - Santee, Southern California to Albuquerque, New Mexico via Tombstone Arizona on http://travelsketch.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/sketching-in-southwestern-states-of.html

My preference is for a macro view of the plant which focuses on its structure.  Interestingly, when I last exhibited my drawings (at another wildlife reserve - the Mission Trails Regional Park, in San Diego, California) the comment that was most often made by visitors was that people had never really looked at cacti and succulents close up before - but they would in future!  That's enough for me to keep drawing them as I do!

In terms of working in a series or with a theme see my website 12 good reasons to paint in a series

Now I just need to get my website updated!

Review: Society of Botanical Artists Exhibition 2011

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Private View of the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists. "The World of Plants" exhibition continues until 17th April and I'm planning a return visit before it closes.

The World of Plants is an exhibition within the exhibition
- note how large some of the work is!
all artwork copyright the artists
all photos copyright Katherine Tyrrell - with the kind permission of the SBA

More of "The World of Plants"

Here's my impressions - and then a lot of photos of the exhibition.

You cannot copyright nature

Did you know that you can't copyright nature?

I've recently come across a couple of blog posts which highlight some potential copyright pitfalls for artists who draw and paint nature in terms of:

• natural history subjects,
• animals and wildlife,
• flowers and plants and
• natural landscapes. 

Red Cabbage
coloured pencils on Art Spectrum Colorfix
copyright Katherine Tyrrel

If that includes you I suggest you read on!

The Art Law Blog has a couple of posts which explain the issues:

• Copyright Pitfall No. 1: When Nature Inspires Your Art, Watch Out (June 18, 2009) by Tobias Butler
• Copyright Pitfall No. 2: When Nature Inspires Your Art, Make Sure You Copy Only Mother Nature (July 21, 2009) by Tobias Butler

I'm adding these into my information site Copyright for Artists

Below you can find my bullet point summary of the points made in the posts - however you really need to read the original posts to grasp the full extent of the points being made.

• you cannot copyright nature because you cannot claim ownership as the author
• consequently you cannot corner the market in depicting a particular aspect of nature
• you can only copyright those elements which are the artistic elements of the work - the aspects which you personally add to what nature created and make it distinctively your own work
  
• you can only prevent other artists from copying the elements you added - ie those aspects which make your work unique

To understand what copyright protection you can claim for a work. Tobias Butler suggests that you should:

• Carefully think about what could be considered your original elements.
• If you find a similar work that was made before yours, make sure you have additional original elements and think about removing their original elements.
• Keep an eye on people who had access to your works and development processes.

Copyright Pitfall No. 2: When Nature Inspires Your Art, Make Sure You Copy Only Mother Nature

What are the implications?

Here are some aspects which occurred to me:

• does photorealism work against copyright? It seems to me that people using a photorealism style - as opposed to a more painterly style - are likely to have more difficulty identifying the artistic elements which make the work unique to them. (ie if somebody stood on the same spot and took a photograph of exactly the same aspect of nature they could create an exact copy if working in photorealism). The only elements they can copyright may be limited to the overall design of the image. However if somebody else took the photo then presumably the copyright for that element resides with the photographer not the artist and any painting is always a derivative work? So what elements are left for the photorealistic artist to copyright?
• what is 'nature'? I began to wonder where the borders of nature began and ended. If nature includes all plants and animals and natural landscapes - would it not also include homo sapiens?
• what about portraiture? Are portraits of people also included? If you paint a realistic painting of your daughter can you copyright it because you were a collaborative partner in the authorship of creation? (My tongue is not entirely in my cheek!)

Some questions for my readers

What's your reaction to this information? Did you know it already or are you feeling slightly stunned right now?

Does our inability to copyright nature suggest any more questions to you?

If you create art from nature, do you know what the elements of your own work are which sets it apart from what nature created?

Do you ever think about copyright before you start to create?

An international exhibition at Mission Trails Regional Park

Examples of my drawings of cacti and succulents
coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I first started drawing cacti and succulents after my visit to California, Arizona and New Mexico in 2006 (see my sketches in California, Arizona & New Mexico (July 2006) in my Travels with a Sketchbook blog). I then started to seek them out whenever I visited the hot dry glasshouses at Wisley and Kew or the Royal Horticultural Society shows to find out more about them and specifically to find out their names. I found I was soon becoming absorbed in the shapes and the colours which were both very simple and very complex. Mathematical and monochrome with a twist - ideal for all artists who used to work with numbers! I now have succulents adorning my south-facing kitchen window ledge - and a gallery of drawings of cacti and succulents!

Recently, my good friend Louise Sackett has been pitching for an exhibition slot in 2010 at the Mission Trails Regional Park in Southern California. The good news came through yesterday. Apparently from 100+ applications only 12 applications were accepted and our group was one of them!

So in November/December 2010, those of you within travelling distance of San Diego and the Mission Trails Regional Park will be able to see the Park's very first exhibition of artwork by an international group of artists - Louise Sackett, Nicole Caulfield, Gayle Mason (who will be exhibiting her wildlife art), Vivien Blackburn, and myself.

Now all I have to do is identify plants appropriate to the area. There's a fascinating list of the habitats and plants on the park's website

Note: Mission Trails Regional Park comprises c. 5,800 acres of both natural and developed recreational acres. Its rugged hills, valleys and open areas represent what the area now now covered by the urban area of San Diego would have looked like prior to the landing of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in San Diego Bay in 1542 (see a timeline of San Diego history). Located eight miles northeast of downtown San Diego, the park was created in 1974 and is now one of the largest urban parks in the United States. This is the trail map and these are links to opportunities for nature study and the Visitor Centre.

Gardens and Botanical Art

Tropical Sussex - a work in progress

8" x 10", coloured pencils on Arches HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Do you draw inspiration from natural forms? Do you like observing everything about plants? If you do you probably like gardens and you may have become interested in botanical art.

Speaking personally, I love trees and plants and flowers - and gardens, but I guess regular readers of my two blogs may have guessed that by now! I'm even thinking about doing a series about trees for my series project!

Plus I love visiting gardens where you can see them all to their best advantage. I find I sometimes look at a plant in a completely new light when spotting it in a garden I'm visiting. That's what happened to me this summer when visiting Great Dixter - I suddenly saw the leaves of the Canna in a wholly new light. It was like looking at some marvellous abstract sculpture - and I was hooked. I spent simply ages looking at them from every angle and observing how the colours changed every time the light changed. They then took up residence in my head and are demanding to get out - but it's a lot easier said than done!

Great Gardens of the World

What I want to do is share what I know about good gardens to visit and I'm very much hoping people with share with me which are the good gardens that they've visited.

One of the ways I'm doing this is by developing a series of information sites for those interested in great gardens around the world. Below you'll find a lits of the information sites for the first gardens - which have all been created on Squidoo - plus the group site which will hopefully include sites created by other people in due course. People familiar with my travels with a sketchbook will recognise a lot of the names. I've got a lot more in draft but thought I'd share these now with people who want to catch Autumn Colours somewhere new this year - or maybe just take a virtual tour!

What I'm trying to do with these is provide you with all the practical information about what's there and how to get there but also something of a taster of what it all looks like by finding sites which have photos of the gardens.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew

Over a million people visit the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew each year. The 300 acres of gardens and botanical collections are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means they rank alongside Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and the Taj Mahal!

Sissinghurst Castle Garden - a great garden

Sissinghurst Castle Garden is probably the most famous 20th century garden in the UK. Find out more about this extremely popular garden whether you love Sissinghurst already or aim to visit in future, in reality or as a virtual visitor.

Great Dixter - a great garden

Great Dixter in East Sussex was created by Christopher Lloyd and is a garden which is extremely popular with gardeners who like plants and flowers. Find out more about this extremely popular garden whether you love Great Dixter already or aim to visit in future - for real or as a virtual visitor.

Bodnant Garden - A Great Garden

Bodnant Garden in North Wales is one of the most beautiful gardens in the UK and is world-famous. It comprises lawns, terraced gardens and is noted for its botanical collections and wide range of plants.

The Great Garden Guide

Visit the great gardens of the world to find out how they got that status! This site provides information about guides to the great gardens of the world.

HELP PLEASE: I have also included a section about Blogging about Great Gardens - so if you've done a blog post in the past about a great garden then let me know and I'll include a link!

Great Gardens Headquarters Whether you're planning to visit a great garden soon or just want to pay a virtual visit, this group contains links to some great gardens.

Botanical Art

I found out yesterday that Valerie Oxley, who specialises in botanical illustration and is a member of both UKCPS and the Society of Botanical Artists has just had a book published - Botanical Illustration.

Botanical Illustration by Valerie Oxley
Crowood Press (September 2008)

Valerie's botanical art credentials are impressive. Valerie developed the Diploma in Botanical illustration at the University of Sheffield, Department of Lifelong Learning (TILL). She's also the Vice-Chairman of the Northern Society for Botanical Art and the Chairman of the Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens.

Valerie also teaches across the UK and this book will be particularly welcomed by Valerie's past and present students who have been urging her to write about the subject for many years!

I've not seen the book yet - but I have taken a peek inside it here - and it looks very interesting.

You can read an outline of what Botanical Illustration is about and what topics it covers in this post on the UKCPS News blog Botanical Illustration by Valerie Oxley.

Find out about the history of botanical art

1) Iride 2) Viola porporina
Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli - Biblioteca digitale - Dioscurides Neapolitanus

I've always been really interested in the historical aspects of botanical art but I've been finding out more and more about it ever since I visited the new Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew in April and saw, for the very first time, botanical art which had been drawn or painted by the acknowledged experts in this field.

Since then I've been digging around on the internet to find more sites about the history of botanical illustration - and have found that there's quite a lot to look at. As a result I've created a new resource for those interested in learning more about the history of botanical illustration - The History of Botanical Art - Resources for Botanical Art Lovers. It includes:

• landmark publications - such as the important Herbals and Florilegium and drawings made as a result of explorations - such as The Endeavour Botanical Illustrations at the Natural History Museum
• Outstanding botanical artists in history
  
• Collections of historical botanical art
• Online galleries of the history of botanical art
• Exhibitions of botanical art from the past and
• Digital versions of historical books about botanical art

Various artists have earned a reputation for either producing excellent work and/or developing the practice of botanical art through exploration. I've decided to also develop a group of information sites devoted to a number of these artists who have either been of historical significance and/or excellent in relation to the development of botanical art - one is completed and a number of others are in draft.

Completed sites

• Maria Sibylla Merian - see Maria Sibylla Merian - Resources for botanical art lovers

Sites in draft

• Basilius Besler
• Georg Dionysius Ehret
• Sydney Parkinson
  
• Bauer Brothers
• Pierre Redoute
  
• Margaret Mee

To be honest I think I'm beginning to like historical botanical art even better than contemporary botanical art. That's maybe because so much of it has really interesting stories associated with it - but I also really like the stylised drawings in the herbals. I believe Morris, Monet and Mackintosh were all fans of herbals as well - so I think maybe I'm in very good company!

Note about the illustration:
Pedanius Dioscorides (ca. 40-ca. 90) was an ancient Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist, who sought medical substances from all over the Roman and Greek world. He practised in ancient Rome during the time of Nero and is famous for writing a five volume book De Materia Medica. This is one of the most influential herbal books in history, provided a basleine for all modern pharmacopeias and remained in use until about 1600. A number of illustrated manuscripts of the Materia Medica survive, some of them from as early as the 5th through 7th centuries. The most famous of these early copies is the Vienna Dioscurides (512/513). The Illustration is from Codex ex Vindobonensis Graecus 1 in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli
Wikipedia - Dioscorides

Links:

• The History of Botanical Art - Resources for Botanical Art Lovers
• Kew opens the world's first dedicated botanical art gallery
• Maria Sibylla Merian - at the Getty Museum, Buckingham Palace and Kew Gardens
• Book Review - 1001 Plant and floral illustrations from early herbals
• Book Review: Merian's Antique Botanical Prints
• Book Review: Besler's Book of Flowers and Plants

Kew opens the world's first dedicated botanical art gallery

Dr Shirley Sherwood outside The Shirley Sherwood Gallery

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

On Saturday 19th April, The Shirley Sherwood Gallery opened at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. It will exhibit precious works of botanical art from the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Dr Shirley Sherwood, many of which have never been on public display before.

Botanical art is experiencing a resurgence of interest amongst artists, collectors, botanists and naturalists. However, until now, there hasn't been a Gallery anywhere in the world which is totally dedicated to the year round display of botanical art.

The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew has a collection of 200,000 images of fine and rare examples of botanical art - but these could typically only be accessed by permission. Dr Shirley Sherwood has created what is probably the finest collection of contemporary botanical art today but was storing much of it despite arranging regular and temporary exhibitions of the Collection around the world. Neither had a satisfactory permanent home for their heritage collections - until now that is.

This week I'm planning a series of posts about botanical art.

• This post is going to be about the brand new Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew, the opening day and the exhibition. I'll be highlighting some of the artists whose work is included in the exhibition.
• Tomorrow my post will be about the book that Kew Gardens has published to mark the inaugural exhibition - Treasures of Botanical Art. I've got such a long list of works which caught my attention, that this post will also continue to highlight some of the artists in the exhibition.
  
• On Wednesday, my post will be about the annual exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists at Westminster, when I will highlight some of the artists producing prize-winning contemporary botanical art.

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery on the opening day

Opening Day at the new Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

On Saturday I went to the opening day of the new Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew - as did 654 other people. 1018 also visited on Sunday so I call that a pretty good start to a new Gallery on a very damp and drizzly weekend! If you're planning to visit the gallery in the future or have already visited it please comment below.

Admission is free as it is included in the price of an entry ticket. I'm a Premier Friend of Kew so will be visiting a lot!

The Shirley Sherwood Link gallery
- looking through to the Main Gallery
RBG, Kew

The first thing you notice when you walk into the gallery is the lowered light levels - but you soon get to used to this - and I thought the lighting was impeccable as you can see from this picture.

The gallery provides a tightly controlled environment for the botanical art in terms of light, temperature and humidity. It was busy but its design also seems to keep noise levels down. There is a large central room and then there are a number of side galleries - making it suitable to exhibit around specific themes.

Heating and air conditioning have been designed to use a fraction of the energy a conventional building would use; special glass and blinds will automatically react to light – reducing the running costs of the building and thus reducing Kew’s carbon footprint.
Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew

The intention is that botanical art should be on display all year round so there should always be something to see. In any one calendar year it will be possible to see three different exhibitions. Two new exhibitions will open each year. So one will open in Easter and run until early Autumn. Another will open in the Autumn and then run until the following Easter.

The theme of the second exhibition is Trees and will open to coincide with Kew’s celebration of the Year of the Tree. From May visitors will also be able to encounter the Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway enabling them to walk through the tree canopy amongst some of Kew’s oldest and largest trees.
Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew

I gather from the staff that a future exhibition - in the 250th year of Kew - will be about The Art of Plant Evolution.

The new gallery can be reached very easily from either the Victoria Gate on Kew Road which is the largest entrance and is nearest Kew Gardens underground Station or the Lion Gate - also on Kew Road. It's opposite the Temperate House and is adjacent to the existing Marianne North Gallery which I highlighted in my previous (February) post Kew Gardens - two women and two galleries for botanical art. What I hasn't realised is that the Gallery is now attached to the Marianne North Gallery by a corridor. This will become a permanent gallery for the display of items from the Shirley Sherwood Collection - no matter what the main exhibition is about.

The Marianne North Gallery has a permanent display of Victorian botanical and landscape paintings and is due to close soon for some extensive renovation and will be reopening in time for Kew's celebrations for its 250th birthday next year. I'll be doing a blog post about this soon - and the innovative 'adopt a painting' scheme.

The inaugural exhibition - Treasures of Botanical Art

The short story is I ran out of superlatives as I was making notes while going round the exhibition. I have never ever before seen so much truly wonderful botanical art in one place. I'm going to have to pay a few more visits before I've taken it all in. That said, I'm also definitely recommending that people keen on botanical art who are unable to visit the exhibition should all rush out and buy the book which I will be reviewing tomorrow!

There are a 184 paintings on display, of which about two thirds are from the Shirley Sherwood Collection and about a third from the Kew Collection. The exhibition is organised so that works are presented in terms of the type of flower or plant with historical and modern art hanging side by side. As such it reminded me very much of Dr Sherwood's earlier book New Flowering: 1000 years of Botanical Art which adopted the same approach. It's certainly a very effective method of display.

Here are just a few of the artists which deserve a mention. I'm going to focus on the 'older' artists today and then feature modern artists tomorrow (I've got a lot of link searching to do!). I was absolutely amazed to find that I was in an exhibition which had work on display by Basilius Besler, Maria Sibylla Merian, George Dionysus Ehret and Franz Bauer - but I was! Other notable artists represented include Marianne North and Margaret Mee.

First, the exhibition includes a display of some very famous Herbals including the Hortus Sanitatis (The Garden of Health) which was one of the very first plant books to be printed - in Mainz in 1491.

There is also a huge copy of Hortus Eystettensis on display which shows a full plate copper engraving of a Corona imperialis polyanthus by Basilius Besler. This is the book which "changed the nature of botanical art overnight". In 2001, a deluxe coloured copy of this book changed hands at Christies for $1.4 million. Reproductions continue to attract high prices.

Basilius Besler¹s magnificent engravings are the first large-folio natural history botanicals. His work, Hortus Eystettensis (Garden of Eichstätt), is man¹s earliest documentation of a specific garden and is the oldest of all of the great botanicals. Over 1,000 varieties of flowers are depicted in 367 exquisitely engraved and colored plates. In the early 1600s, the Prince Bishop of Eichstätt, Germany created what was probably the first comprehensive botanical garden devoted to flowering plants. Many of the exotic flowers were imported from the Americas and the Ottoman Empire.
Joel Oppenheimer - Oppenheimer Kew Gardens Edition

Polyanthus and Primroses
Maria Sibylla Merian (b. Frankfurt Germany 1647-1717)
Watercolour on vellum, 340mm 2 265mm
From the Sir Arthur Church Collection RBG, Kew

What was also amazing to me was just how fresh much of the work appeared to be.

Merian was born in 1647 and travelled to far-flung tropical lands to draw insects and plants, her combination of artistic talent and close observation of the subject in the field set a precedent for scientific illustration.
RBG, Kew

The exhibition incudes an absolutely stunning hand-coloured lithograph of a painting of a Strelitzia by Franz Bauer. Here's what the Natural History Library has to say about Franz Bauer.

Franz (Francis) Andreas Bauer (1758-1840)

Born in Feldsburg, Austria, Franz was the older brother of Ferdinand Bauer, the famous botanical artist. After arriving in England in 1788, Sir Joseph Banks employed Franz as a botanical artist at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

For the next 40 years, Bauer illustrated the newly discovered plants from around the world that were introduced to England via Kew, where they were grown and studied for the first time in a scientific manner. Bauer provided illustrations for a number of botanical books, including his 1818 work Strelitzia depicta: or coloured figures of the known species of the genus Strelitzia from the drawings in the Banksian Library'.

Bauer was probably the first artist to draw detailed plant dissections for recording purposes at Kew. He even drew greatly magnified pollen specimens with remarkable detail and accuracy, despite the optical limitations of the microscopes of his time.

Natural History Museum - Nature Online - Online Exhibitions - Art Themes - Franz Bauer

The artists of "The Company School" are unnamed. They are Indian artists who produced paintings for European botanists. Their work now forms an important part of the Kew Collection. Here's a comment from a Guardian article about The Company School and a British Museum exhibition of their work gives an insight into the nature of their work

Livistona mauritiana
watercolour of paper 590mm x 545 mm
Kew Collection

The brilliance and simplicity of the colours, the meticulous attention to detail, the gem-like highlights, the way the pictures seem to glow, all show the Company artists' Mughal training; the tentative washes of a memsahib's watercolour are a world away. Yet no artist working in a normal Mughal atelier would have placed their subjects detached from a landscape against a white background, or with flowers cut into a perfect, scientific cross-section, as is usual in Company botanical images. Two traditions met head on, and from that blinding impact an inspirational new fusion took place.

In time, the Company style came to be used by British officials all over India to record many facets of Indian life, including the flora and fauna that came to fascinate the British. Its extreme precision meant that it quickly became recognised as the perfect medium for illustrations to the different schemes of classification that appealed to the Enlightenment minds within the Company.
Gods and monsters about Faith, Narrative and Desire: Masterpieces of Indian Painting in the British Museum 2007

There are many, many artists and works from history which deserve further mention. It's impossible to do them all justice in one blog post - and I may well return to this topic in future posts before the exhibition finishes.

Future developments

World heritage - caring for and enhancing Kew’s heritage collections, buildings and landscapes, and communicating their universal value.
Kew Corporate Plan 2007/12: one of its nine core strategies

I have a caveat about the Gallery which it might seem to churlish to mention, especially as I guess all those concerned with its opening would like a short space to draw breath! There again, there's no time like the present.........

Striped tulips and double anenomes
17th century illustration by an unknown artist
watercolour on paper 215mm x 330mm
Kew Collection

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are a World Heritage site and consequently needs to aim to be matching the best. While the new Gallery is undeniably a massive advance in terms of facilities for the physical display of a very limited number of botanical artworks, it doesn't as yet match the standard being developed for access to heritage collections of art around the world in recent years.

Elsewhere the emphasis (partly in response to funding requirements) has been on opening up access to collections through the use of digital technology so that more people are aware and can better appreciate the contents of collections. Most art galleries are unable to display all their collections at one time. However they now address this through the development of technological strategies and facilities.

What I'd like to see on Kew's agenda for development are two key aspects which would help to promote both accessibility and education.

• dedicated microsites for each exhibition in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery - linked to the main Kew website.
  
• I'd like to see a dedicated microsite for this exhibition providing the sort of information as that which I have provided above through links to other websites run by the Natural History Museum and the British Library (and Wikipedia!). Information needs to be accessible in ways which don't depend on physically standing in front of a painting or buying the exhibition catelogue.
  
• A microsite has a unique URL and acts as a stimulus for visitors. It also permits people all around the world who are unable to visit to see a sample of what is on display in each exhibition.
  
• Microsites are becoming standard practice in many museums and art galleries and indeed one was developed for Kew Gardens for the recent Henry Moore exhibition.
  
• Doubtless funding would be required to develop exhibition microsites and doubtless there are a number of technology firms in the nearby technology corridor which would fall over themselves to sponsor such a site. After all, Royal, heritage and green are an unbeatable combination if you're seeking sponsorship!
  
• a linked IT gallery with touchscreens allowing access to archives of digitalised images of the botanical art in the collections. The IT Gallery at the National Portrait Gallery provides a model of the sort of facility which is being developed in various museums and art galleries to enable access to heritage collections of art. Hopefully this sort of facility will feature in future plans for botanical art at Kew. The question of sponsorship is not difficult if Kew looks to the technology 'giants'.
  

More information

For those who'd like to read even more about the new gallery I've included links at the end to all the various newspaper and magazine articles about the new gallery - which all include different images from the exhibition. I've also added links in this post to my information site Botanical Art - Resources for Artists.

I know there are a lot of botanical artists who'd like to view the contents of this blog and read the links. Can I make a very rare request that you e-mail or tell them about this blog post so that we can all help spread the word about what a great resource this is. Anybody visiting London who is interested in botanical art should definitely plan on making a trip out to Kew.

Of course, next year is the 250th anniversary of Kew - I can't wait to see what sort of exhibitions will be on display in the Gallery during the anniversary year!

Links:

• The Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• News coverage of the opening of the gallery:
• BBC - Kew opens botanical art gallery - This contains a news video of the inside of the gallery and close-ups of various works in the exhibition including a stunning painting of a Strelitzia Augusta by Franz Bauer
• BBC - slideshow of images from the exhibition. A must for those keen to see some of the images on display
  
• The Times - The Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens reveals the beauty of botany
• The Daily Telegraph - Kew's £3m gallery to showcase botanic art
• The Independent - Kew opens the world's first gallery for botanical art
• The Guardian - Digging up treasures: Kew shows off plant pictures in new gallery
• Country Life - New Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew
• Botanical Art - Resources for Artists - many links of interest to botanical artists plus it contains a bookmark link to this blog post. All of the news articles about the new exhibition plus all of the links to historical figures and books are archived on this site in a section devoted to the new gallery. Links to botanical artists in history plus early herbals and florilegia are also archived on the site.
• Making A Mark:
  
• Kew Gardens - two women and two galleries for botanical art (February 2008)
• Flowers in Art: William Morris - herbals, flowers and making patterns (July 2007)
  

Composition - using PS Elements to help with design

This post is about using tools in Adobe Photoshop or PS Elements to help with your composition.

I'm going to start with a photo of a waterlily which I took last summer. This is good of the flower and the shadow it creates but needs adjusting to create a better format as it commits the 'composition crime' of having petals 'just' touching one of the four edges of the picture plane.

I'm then going to do a quick run through of how I can change this photo. I'm using the PS Elements 5.0 menu for navigation directions.

Working with shadows

The first rule of working with photographs is don't copy the photograph!

For a start, photographs do not record values well and often also distort colours! You'll probably be familiar with the black holes known as shadows which you will often see in photographs.

Values are critical to good design so I usually start by looking at the quality of the shadows. If you have a black hole problem you can lighten the shadows. To access the dialog box in PS Elements, choose Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Shadows/Highlights.

Try lightening the shadows. This is what the waterlily looks like with the shadows lightened by 25% and 50%. As you can see, by lightening the shadow we can start to see the pink in the reflections.This doesn't make the values in the rest of the image right - but we know cameras have a tendency to darken values so lightening them in this way enables us to see into them and the colours which are actually present and which you could see if sat next to it painting plein air.

Working with levels

I didn't find the levels tool for ages but now use it all the time. To access the dialog box, choose Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels. You can also get to this through Control+L

The levels tool works with the RGB input (the red green blue colour channels). Each has a completely separate profile.

The Levels dialog box is a powerful tonal and color-adjustment tool. You can make levels adjustments on the entire image or a selected portion............You can do any of the following with the Levels dialog box:

• Set the shadow and highlight values to make sure that your image uses the full tonal range.
• Adjust the brightness of the image’s middle tones without affecting the shadow and highlight values.
• Fix a color cast by making grays neutral. You can also enhance an image by adding a slight color cast, for example, by adding a warming effect on a sunset.
• Target shadow and highlight RGB values if you are preparing images for commercial printing.
Adobe - PS Elements Help

I use Levels to either get a more accurate and realistic image or to see what would happen if I pushed colours in a particular direction - just one of the many tool in Elements which allows you to flex colours. Basically it enables me to play and visualise different options. A word of warning though - I find that using Auto Levels often produces the most awful images!

The left of the profile deals with shadow values, the middle part with the middle tones and the right hand edge deals with the highlight values. I find that pulling in the outer edges to the edge of the profile is usually the fastest way of getting an image which is more accurate in both value and colour terms. This photo has had its profile tweaked.

Working with grayscale

The greyscale option enables you to see what the pattern of values looks like. To access the dialog box, choose Image > Mode > Grayscale.

You can then see whether your image is using the full range of values or has all its values in the mid range.

This grayscale image shows that the image reads when in grayscale and that the shadows help with seeing the overall form.

Working with the crop tool

The crop tool has the advantage of having some of the standard formats for paintings (and frames!) set up and ready to go.

I almost always use the crop tool. It takes a very expert photographer to get the best image in the shot. I find I can almost always improve on what is there by fiddling around with the crop tool and seeing what other options exist.

You can locate the crop tool by following Image > Crop. This is the crop I decided to work with having selected a square format. I was thinking in thirds and also moving the four most important lines around to avoid the problem of tips of the leaves 'just' touching the edge of the picture plane.

Working with the cut-out tool

I've only recently started working with the cut-out tool. It's partly been prompted by my starting to study the woodblock prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists.

The Cutout filter portrays an image as though it were made from roughly cut-out pieces of colored paper. High-contrast images appear as if in silhouette, while colored images are built up from several layers of colored paper. You can set the tonal levels, edge simplicity, and edge fidelity.
Adobe - PS Elements Help

You can access it via Filter > Artistic > cutout. It's very helpful for developing notan-type images. Using the cutout tool can train your eye to see how to be able to create notan without the help of digital software.

This is the image I then produced. Cutout merges and simplifies both colours and values - and can change colours. It's a good idea to try tweaking the number of levels and the edge fidelity to get simpler and simpler images and/or to see what sort of results you get.

Then finally - using the cutout image as a reference to work from, I started to develop my drawing - and this is what I produced.

Waterlily - notan in colour
coloured pencil on Arches HP, 5" x 5"
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Personally, I think I maybe drew this too small and it needs a bit more space. Or maybe I'm thinking this could be improved if I could use some of the pink pencils I discarded after the coloured pencil screening!

At the moment, I think I prefer my digital notan image best of all!

I hope you found this quick overview useful. If you've got any queries please leave a comment below.

Flowers in Art: William Morris - herbals, flowers and making patterns

Don't copy any style at all, but make your own; yet you must study the history of our art...
William Morris

William Morris (1834-1896) has had a significant influence on decorative art in the UK. His designs are based on natural forms - many of which are flowers. Of the nearly 600 designs which are attrubuted to him there are very few which do not feature flowers, leaves, trees or plants.

'Chrysanthemum'
Wallpaper, William Morris
Late 19th century
Victoria and Albert Museum
Museum no. E.504-1919

Along with people like Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Morris was also one of the most prominent practitioners within the Arts and Crafts Movement an aesthetic movement that was prominent in the UK and USA between 1880 and 1910. He influenced a number of other important designers such as Charles F.A. Voysey (1857-1927).

William Morris, as a writer, designer and socialist had a vast range of interests (see Wikipedia entry for a quick overview) but I'm interested in how William Morris developed his flower designs and this post will focus on that - and also include other interesting tidbits.

Sources I'm using for this post and of further information include:

• "The Flowers of William Morris" by Derek Baker published for the centennial of Morris's death in 1896. This comments at some length on the sixteenth-century herbals (books) favoured by Morris
  
• The Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A is an especially interesting place in relation to Morris. It now includes his work in its archives (eg wallpaper) but it also houses some of the works of art which Morris himself used to stimulate his own designs - such as the 'herbals', which contained descriptions and illustrations of herbs, flowers, fruit and other plants.

The first pattern to be issued, in 1864, was 'Daisy', a simple design of naively drawn meadow flowers. The source was a wallhanging illustrated in a 15th-century version of Froissart's Chronicles', but similar flower forms can be seen in late medieval 'mille-fleurs' tapestries and in early printed herbals.

These two designs, and the next pattern Fruit (also known as Pomegranate), share a medieval character that links Morris's early work in the decorative arts with the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and with Ruskin. However, they are also influenced by Morris's abiding interest in naturalism in ornament.

Lecturing on pattern in 1881, he claimed, 'any decoration is futile ... when it does not remind you of something beyond itself'. His sources were plants themselves, observed in his gardens or on country walks, and also images of plants in 16th-century woodcuts (he owned copies of several 16th- and 17th-century herbals, including Gerard's famous Herball), illuminated manuscripts, tapes-tries and other textiles incorporating floral imagery. His designs were not to be literal transcriptions of natural forms but subtle stylised evocations.
Victoria and Albert Museum - William Morris - wallpaper design

• Links to arts and crafts websites listed by the V&A including:
• The William Morris Society
• The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens (San Marino, California):
• The Huntington William Morris Collection Archive (check images incorporating the word 'design')
  
• Exhibition (2004): The Beauty of Life - William Morris and the Art of Design
• and the exhibition archive of images (includes several designs incorporating flowers)
  
• Exhibition (2002): William Morris - creating the useful and the beautiful
• The William Morris Gallery in Waltham Forest
• The Arts and Crafts Museum in Cheltenham
  

Design for Windrush printed fabric by William Morris. (Identification from Linda Parry, ed.: William Morris, Abrams, 1996, ISBN 0-8109-4282-8, p. 265)

His designs were used for wallpapers, textiles, tiles, stained glass, ordinary glass ware - in other words all manner of things which were used in a decorative way and were produced or commissioned by his company, Morris and Company.

The wallpapers, textiles, carpets, tapestries, and furniture designed by the Firm were intended to create an integrated artistic interior and, in so doing, to transform domestic life into a deeply aesthetic experience. Morris wished "to revive a sense of beauty in home life, to restore the dignity of art to the ordinary household decoration."Huntington Exhibition 2004

Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd were first commissioned to produce wallpapers for Morris & Co. in 1930. This page of the William Morris website provides some fascinating archives of images relating to the applied use of flower designs done in pear wood blocks.

I've tried to summarise some of the features of the floral design work of William Morris below:

Context and influences:

He was much influenced by John Ruskin who was an observer of nature and an artist who enjoyed drawing flowers and who collected herbals. He emphasised in his book 'Elements of Drawing' the importance of close observation. He was also a member of a Pre-Raphaelite circle that included Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.

Morris was also of the view that it was desirable to surround ourselves with decoration, lesser art not fine art, originating from natural sources rather than scientific representation.

'The Great Herbal',
book with woodcut illustrations, printed by Peter Treveris, 1526. Victoria and Albert Museum no. L.1059-1901

Sources:

Morris collected and used herbals to suggest designs incorporating specific flowers or plants. Herbals were books about plants which contained illustrations which were woodcuts or engavings of high quality and were first printed around the sixteenth century.

He also visited South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) to study designs from Turkey and Persia and the Islamic influences on flowers; incorporated wild tulips (a near eastern flower) into his garden at Kelmscott. (Note: At the time of writing Kelmscott Manor, former home of William Morris, is flooded due to the extensive rain and flooding in central and western England.). Given my own endeavours in this respect (see Plant Motifs and Art #2 at the V&A), I am persuaded that it's worthwhile to pursue this line of study some more.

Realism:

His knowledge of flowers was considerable but his designs were rarely botanically correct - however he also had a practical perspective on this

Of course you understand that it is impossible to imitate nature literally; the utmost realism of the most realistic painter falls a long way short of it.
William Morris ' Making the best of it'

Design

Morris himself summarised the key qualities for a designer when he said you must fully understand nature and study it closely, know your history and then develop and use your imagination.
The Flowers of William Morris

Kennet indigo-discharge printed textile designed by William Morris.
(Identification from Linda Parry: William Morris Textiles, New York, Viking Press, 1983, ISBN 0-670-77074-4, p. 155)

Pattern:

Ornamental pattern work...must contain three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.
William Morris ' Making the best of it'

For those designing pattern

Above all, avoid vagueness...definite form bounded by firm outline is a necessity for all ornament...do not be afraid of your design or try to muddle it up so that people can scarcely see it; it if it is arranged on good lines and its details are beautiful you need not fear it looking hard so long as it covers the ground wel and is not wrong in colour.
William Morris ' Making the best of it'

and

In choosing natural forms be rather shy of certain very obvious decorative ones, eg bindweed, passion-flower and the poorer forms of ivy, used without the natural copiousness. I should call these trouble savers and warn you of them....we have had them used so cheaply this long while we are sick of them
William Morris ' Making the best of it'

Gardening

He liked to develop medievalism within his gardens - first at The Red House and then at Kelmscott Manor both in terms of design and the plants.

This post has barely scraped the surface of the wealth of information that exists about William Morris - so do explore the links if you'd like to know more.

Note (and an aside): Jane Morris, William Morris's wife, is the model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting Proserpine 1877 (Tate Gallery). This is a photograph of her posed by Rossetti from the William Morris Gallery. It's one of the earliest examples of pre-raphelite photography.

Links:

• The Flowers of William Morris, Derek Baker, Barn Elms Publishing 1996
• Victoria and Albert Museum:
  
• William Morris - wallpapers
  
• Plant motifs and different cultures (includes herbals)
• Plant motif projects
• Resource boxes for plant motifs
• The Huntington
  
• The Wlliam Morris Society
• The William Morris Gallery website