A celebration of botanical art throughout history – in pictures

A new book Plant: Exploring The Botanical World celebrates the beauty and diversity of plants from around the world across all media - from murals in ancient Greece to a Napoleonic-era rose print and cutting-edge scans

Main image: Bush Bananas, c.1997–2003. Acrylic on canvas by Marie Ryder Photograph: Phaidon

  • Lilium chalcedonicum, c.1500 BC. Fresco, dimensions variable, Thera, Santorini

    Swallows fly between long-stemmed red flowers (possibly Lilium chalcedonicum, the red lily of Greece) painted by an anonymous artist as part of a mural in a house built on the Greek island of Santorini during the Minoan age, some time before 1600 BC. That places them among the oldest pictures of recognizable plants currently known – they predate ancient Egyptian images of plants by around 300 years. They may mark the very beginning of botanical art – if only we could be certain what plants they show.
    There remains some dispute about how precisely identifiable the plants are, however. They are probably stylized representations of lilies growing among equally stylized and highly colourful volcanic rocks. What- ever the species, the flowers – depicted in various stages from buds to full bloom – are so lifelike that they seem to sway in a breeze. The paintings were discovered in the 1960s during archaeological investigations on Santorini that revealed a Minoan city which had been destroyed during the Thera eruption, in approximately 1600 BC. They may mark the very beginning of botanical art – if only we could be certain what plants they show.

  • Rosa centifolia: Rosier à cent feuilles, 1820. Hand-coloured stipple engraving, 23 × 32 cm / 9 × 123⁄4 in Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society, London

    This cabbage rose appeared in Les roses, a series of plates by renowned botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté. On 2 December 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowned his wife, Joséphine, Empress of the French in Paris. Four months later Joséphine made Redouté ‘plant painter of her Majesty’, with a yearly salary of 18,000 francs, then a huge sum. Les Roses was not published until after her death in 1814.
    At the time the publication of the Jardin de la Malmaison, about Joséphine’s garden near Paris, was approaching completion. It was lavishly illustrated, with colour-printed stipple engravings based on watercolours by Redouté and descriptions by Étienne- Pierre Ventenat. Les roses used the same technique of stipple engraving, this time with descriptions by Claude- Antoine Thory. In this case the association with Joséphine was indirect: she had died in 1814 at Malmaison, and the roses documented by Redouté came from various gardens in and near Paris. One, in Saint-Denis, had been owned by Jacques-Louis Descemet, previously a supplier to Joséphine, who cultivated the cabbage rose shown here. When this illustration appeared in the nineteenth installment of Les roses in Paris in July 1820, Descemet had already gone bankrupt due to the plundering of his garden by British troops.

  • Large Flowering Sensitive Plant, from Robert John Thornton, The Temple of Flora, 1799. Hand-coloured engraving, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

    A Jamaican man in the background gives an idea of the size of Calliandra grandiflora, a native of Central America whose reddish-purple stamens trail in tassels above its fine leaves. British artist Philip Reinagle was commissioned by botanist Thornton to illustrate the book – a tribute to the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who a few decades earlier had established the binomial system of naming plant and animal species, still used today.
    The book – more properly known as New Illustra- tion of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus, and the Temple of Flora and the Garden of Nature – was a tribute to the Swedish botanist and natural historian Carl Linnaeus, who a few decades earlier had established the binomial system of naming plant and animal species that is still used today. Reinagle’s setting of what was then called Mimosa grandiflora against a darkening, romantic background is typical of the majestic plates Thornton commissioned from the leading flower painters of the time, including also Sydenham Edwards (see p.127). Reinagle contributed eleven illustrations, which were engraved by Joseph Constantine Stadler. The ambitious scheme proved a commercial failure when it was published in 1799, however, and Thornton died destitute in 1837

  • Opium poppies (Papaver somniferum), 18th-century album leaf, ink and colours on silk, National Palace Museum, Taipei

    This delicate painting brings together Western artistic traditions – seen in the baroque shading and use of perspective – with Chinese taste, in the fringing of the petals and ‘true to nature’ curving stems. This is one of 16 paintings by Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione in the Album of Immortal Blossoms in an Everlasting Spring. Castiglione arrived in China in 1715. He adapted traditional Chinese art into what became known as the Sino-European or Chinese Palace style.
    Opium poppies (Papaver somniferum), 18th-century album leaf, ink and colours on silk, National Palace Museum, Taipei

  • Page from Dara Shikoh Album, c.1633. Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, British Library, London

    The iris in the bottom left of this miniature is easily recognizable, but the other flowers are too stylized to be identified precisely. The stylization reflects the painting’s twin influences, the Persian traditions of the artist (credited to be Mohammad Khan) and the European florilegia, or printed herbals, that inspired its balanced layout. The Dara Shikoh Album is named after the Mughal prince who collected its paintings and calligraphy as a gift for his future wife.
    who collected its paintings and calligraphy as a gift for his future wife. Dara Shikoh was a favoured son of Shah Jahan, emperor of the Islamic Mughal dynasty that ruled India from 1526 to 1857. The Persian rulers set up ateliers of art- ists whose flowing floral borders reflected the importance of flowers and gardens in Islam, where they are symbolic of paradise. The only signed painting in this album is a portrait by Mohammad Khan, who is also credited with hese flowers. The Mughal library held florilegia, illumi- nated psalters and a Bible donated by visiting Europeans. Khan’s composition clearly suggests that he had studied the printed Western herbals, but the refined drawing, col- ouring and brushwork of this painted page is purely Persian.

  • Buddha’s Hand Fruit (Citrus medica ‘Helicteroides’), from Ten Bamboo Studio collection of calligraphy and painting, c.1633 Ink and colour on paper, 25 × 27 cm / 93⁄4 × 101⁄2 in British Museum, London

    This coloured woodblock print from seventeenth-century China shows the fine outline of the curiously shaped yellow fruits of fo-shou or Buddha’s hand, with their characteristic white pitting and a gradation of green on the extremities or ‘fingers’ of the fruit. This illustration by Gao You comes from one of the earliest known picture collections in China to be printed in colour.
    Buddha’s Hand Fruit (Citrus medica ‘Helicteroides’), from Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting, c.1633 Ink and colour on paper, 25 × 27 cm / 93⁄4 × 101⁄2 in British Museum, London

  • Various flowering plants, 1792. Pen and ink and watercolour on paper, 24 × 19.5 cm / 91⁄2 x 71⁄2 in Natural History Museum, London

    This letter carries illustrations in watercolour documenting 10 plant species, including three species of the blood flower in the lower centre of the page: Haemanthus amarylloides, H. coccineus and H. pubescens. Dated 5 October 1792, it was sent by Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, director of the botanic garden of Vienna University, to Swedish botanist Jonas Dryander, librarian to the famous naturalist Sir Joseph.
    Across Europe, naturalists were joined by networks of correspond- ence by which they exchanged not only letters, books and journals but also plant specimens, either living material such as cuttings, bulbs, fruits and seeds, or preserved material such as herbarium specimens. In addition, bota- nists commonly sent drawings, watercolours or prints of plants to colleagues for information or inquiry. Although it has been claimed that the illustrations shown are by Jac- quin, they are probably by Johannes Scharf. Close analysis reveals that the three images of Haemanthus species are copies of the watercolours, now lost, that were used to prepare the copper engravings of Jacquin’s famous flower book Plantarum rariorum horti caesarei Schoenbrunnensis descriptiones et icones (1797–1804).

  • Monkey bread (Adansonia digitata), from Florindie, ou histoire physico-économique des végétaux de la Torride, 1789. Watercolour on manuscript, Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes

    The large fruits at the foot of this plate both whole and in cross section earn the baobab its colloquial name of ‘monkey bread’: rich in calcium, antioxidants and vitamin C, baobab powder is marketed today as a ‘superfood’. The plate was drawn by an accomplished amateur botanist, the French curate abbé Delahaye, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
    Monkey bread (Adansonia digitata), from Florindie, ou histoire physico-économique des végétaux de la Torride, 1789 Watercolour on manuscript, Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes

  • Red Amaryllis with Blue Background, c.1907 Watercolour on paper, 46.5 × 33 cm / 181⁄2 × 13 in Museum of Modern Art, New York

    The striking contrast of red and blue in this Hippeastrum is a non-traditional approach to capturing the essence of the amaryllis in this bold study by the renowned Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian, a founder of the De Stijl movement. He did not try to copy the living beauty of nature – believing it was impossible – but instead tried to express such beauty from a personal perspective. The use of strong primary colours prefigures Mondrian’s later abstract work.
    He did not try to copy the living beauty of nature – believing it was impossible – but instead tried to express such beauty from a personal perspective. The central placement of the stem evokes a strong char- acteristic of the flower and creates an axis that bisects the central bloom, although the three blooms are not identical nor axially symmetrical. The use of strong primary colours prefigures Mondrian’s later abstract work. This repre- sents a key period in the artist’s shift away from a purely 189 representational approach, while still achieving aesthetic beauty. As a founder of the De Stijl movement, Mondrian found ideas of reduction and creating abstract art central to his approach, and he placed an emphasis on the new art forms introduced at the start of the twentieth century. His style ultimately became entirely nonrepresentational, but this painting pre-dates his change to pure abstraction.

  • Bush Bananas, c.1997–2003. Acrylic on canvas, 32 × 32 cm / 123⁄4 × 123⁄4 in private collection

    Aboriginal Australian artist Marie Ryder draws on traditional dot painting in this celebration of the bush banana, whose ability to thrive in arid areas makes it an important part of the diet of the Eastern Arrernte Aboriginal people of Central Australia. By placing the plant at the centre of her image, Ryder highlights its importance. Footprints on either side represent the spiritual walkabout journey, in which Aboriginal people visit places where they feel a strong connection to the land.
    The footprints on either side of the plant represent the spiritual journey known as walkabout,in which Aboriginal people visit places where they feel a strong connection to the land. The dot-painted background uses traditional browns and yellows to symbolize the soil and the sun, respectively, in one of a series of paintings Ryder calls ‘Bush Tucker Dreamings’. The twining stemsof the bush banana – named Marsdenia australis after the East India Company official William Marsden – contain an edible milky sap, while its greenish-yellow flowers are sucked for nectar. The large, avocado-like fruit are packed with yellow-brown seeds that taste similar to fresh peas. The fruit are eaten raw, or cooked in the hot ash around a fire. Flowers and fruit are collected soon after rainfall, before they deteriorate in the heat of the southern hemisphere summer.

  • The Waiting, 2011. Leaf, light, 120 unique dye destruction prints, 211 × 211 cm / 83 × 83 in private collection

    From a distance, this grid of 120 birch leaves from various times of the year ‘reads’ like a set of uniformly coloured shade cards. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that no two leaves are identical in either shape or colour. British photographic artist Garry Fabian Miller has worked without a camera since 1984, creating images directly on light-sensitive paper, a method that recalls the earliest days of photography in the mid-19th century.
    a method that recalls the earliest days of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, in which light is both medium and subject. His use of long exposures gives his work an inevitable chronological aspect that in one sense replicates the processes of photosynthe- sis and the changing of the seasons. For example, increased spring daylight triggers the chemical changes induced by photosynthesis; on deciduous trees, leaf colour changes from pale yellow-green to deeper green. As summer moves through autumn into winter, the leaves change again, from green shades to yellow then warmer russet hues. In con- trast to traditional and digital photographic exposures that last for a fragment of a second, Miller’s exposures last any- where between one and twenty hours to create his unique, luminous images.

  • Spiders I: no. 5, 2013. Charge-coupled device flatbed scan, 1.2 x 1.8 m / 4 x 6 ft Edge Foundation, New York

    This huge canvas by New York-based artist Katinka Matson uses magnification to emphasize the spider-like forms of petals of the spider chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium). At the start of the 21st century Matson developed a new way of portraying flowers by using a flatbed scanner, Adobe Photoshop and an ink-jet printer. Slowly scanning the flowers captures their exact appearance, without the distortion created by a single-lens photograph.
    At the start of the twenty-first century Matson developed a new way of portraying flowers by using no more than a flatbed scanner, Adobe Photoshop and an ink-jet printer. Slowly scanning the flowers captures their exact appearance, without the distortion that is inevitably created by a single-lens photograph. Chrysanthemums have long been revered by the Chinese and Japanese, and in Germany white chrysanthemums are used at Christmas to symbolize the arrival of the baby Jesus. Matson came upon the idea of making flower images in this way by accident, when she placed a bunch of flowers on a scanner out of curiosity and immediately liked what she saw: ‘I was rather frustrated that day. But the very first flower scans had already inspired me.’ Matson is the first artist to have taken scanning into the realm of high art, and has worked for over a decade to perfect her technique. As she says, ‘New technologies equal new perceptions.’

  • Peruvian daffodil (

    Pamianthe peruviana), 1933. Watercolour and pencil on paper, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London This illustration by Lilian Snelling demonstrates her remarkable skill for depicting delicate white flowers. For 30 years from 1922 Snelling was chief artist for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, during which time she established a reputation as the most important British botanical artist of the era. This striking plant is now extinct in the wild owing to destruction of its habitat. It grows epiphytically, that is, it is supported non-parasitically by another plant.
    Snelling, who had trained in Edinburgh before being commissioned by the plant collec- tor Henry Elwes to complete the posthumously published supplement for his Monograph of the Genus Lilium (1933– 40), was lauded for her technically precise, scientifically accurate and closely observed approach. This striking plant – its common name reflects its resemblance to the narcissus – is now extinct in the wild owing to the destruc- tion of its habitat. The bulbous plant grows epiphytically, that is, it is supported nonparasitically by another plant. Snelling’s elegant style was achieved by building up thin layers of watercolour to accomplish a delicate effect. Until the 1940s Curtis’s plates were hand-coloured; as the official artist, Snelling would copy a zinc plate from her original painting. Then she would add colour to the printed plate as a model for the colourists.

  • Scabiosa crenata. Fruit, diameter 7.2mm, 2013. Hand-coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM), private collection

    What at first appears to be a design for an exotic ballet costume is in fact a magnified micrograph image of a tiny seed of Scabiosa crenata, the pincushion flower, a member of the honeysuckle family. For more than a decade the British artist Rob Kesseler has been working on the frontier between art and science, producing microscopic views of plant material such as seeds and pollen grains, and highlighting how little we know about the mysterious workings of plant propagation.
    Kesseler applies a fine coating of platinum to his specimens before scanning them with a high-magnification scanning electron microscope to produce black-and-white images, which he then begins to tint with thin washes of colour. He does not necessarily reproduce the hues of the objects themselves; instead, he uses colour to enhance the seemingly myste- rious forms, revealing their delicate structure. The results are intended to evoke a sense of the unfamiliar and an impromptu symbolism that inspires curiosity and wonder in those contemplating the possible functions underlying the forms. Through his art, Kesseler makes the invisible fea- tures of plants visible, and his extreme highlights of nature reveal the extraordinary diversity of plant forms.

  • Plant: Exploring The Botanical World is published by Phaidon
    Plant : Exploring The Botanical World published by Phaidon : Cover 9780714871486
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