Botanical Art Around the World and Through the Ages

Debra Lee Baldwin, this month’s speaker, is not only an expert on succulents, but she’s also a wonderful watercolorist: debraleebaldwin.com/succulent-projects/the-easy-way-to-paint-watercolors/.

The art of painting flowers and plants goes back into pre-history. Here’s a prehistoric painting of hemp from Japan: herbmuseum.ca/content/japanese-history-hemp-prehistoric-times.

Halfway down this web page, there are five lovely plant paintings by Barbara Nicholson from the Natural History Museum in London: nhm.ac.uk/discover/nature-on-our-doorstep-the-art-of-british-natural-history.html.

Writer and artist Katherine Tyrrell has created a beautiful and informative website about botanical art and artists. You can read about the long history of plant artists such as Franz Bauer at England’s Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew: (botanicalartandartists.com/about-franz-bauer.html) and you can spend hours roaming around the links on this page: botanicalartandartists.com/history.html. There’s also a page devoted to botanical artists in North America (with a short video of the works of Heeyoung Kim, an orchid painter): botanicalartandartists.com/botanical-artists-in-north-america.html.

Finally, type the words “plants diego rivera” into your Google search box and click on “images” to see Rivera’s iconic lilies and sunflowers!