Stunning Spring Selling Exhibition at Kew Gardens
The
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is delighted to announce its first exhibition of original
botanical artwork that will be for sale, at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery for Botanical
Art. ‘From Eye to Hand’ will consist of paintings by artists whose work already
features in the Kew Collection, and who were invited to submit material for this
exhibition. A commission taken from sales will support the work of Kew, contribute
to the ongoing development of The Shirley Sherwood Gallery for Botanical Art, and
to the care of Kew’s art collection.
February 5 - June 1 2011
The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Second strand of ‘From Eye to Hand’ will feature paintings that have been selected
from the Kew Art Collection, which contains over 200,000 items. These are works
by artists who flourished from the mid eighteenth century, through to those producing
outstanding work today, and includes paintings by some of the undisputed masters
of botanical art. The paintings, publications and archive material displayed here
reveal a variety of style and subject. Some pieces have been produced for publication,
while other examples were made to aid identification of and record plants being
studied by botanists. The use of botanical illustration is still fundamental to
scientific research, and Kew currently commissions a significant number of botanical
illustrations a year. This will be the only section of the exhibition in which the
artwork will not be for sale.
Professor Stephen Hopper, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, says, “This
exhibition will allow visitors to see the splendour and richness of the work of
some of the country’s finest botanical artists. We are excited to be hosting our
first exhibition here at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art where such
stunning work will be on sale. As well as being beautiful in their own right, botanical
illustrations are also important scientific records through which plants are named
and classified - visitors who invest in the artwork are also investing in the essential
work that Kew carries out here and across the globe.”
The Botanical Brush
Alongside ‘From Eye to Hand’, there will be a display of the work of nine artists
who have botanical paintings held in the archive of Hampton Court Palace Florilegium.
The Society was founded in 2004 to record the paintings grown in the gardens of
Hampton Court Palace, with special focus on the plants grown in the Queen Mary Exotics
Collection, a National Heritage Collection unique to Hampton Court Palace that has
been in existence since the seventeenth century.
The Society is limited to 25 members, all qualified botanical artists, who have
gained internationally recognised awards and medals, and whose paintings and private
commissions are held in collections worldwide.
The Secret Garden
The Leicestershire Society of Botanical Illustrators will also feature in the exhibition.
Their paintings represent plants from Belgrave Hall Museum Gardens in Leicester,
many of which date back to the Victorian era. The Society was formed in 1987 by
a small group of enthusiastic botanical painters led by Anne-Marie Evans. Over the
years the Society has grown, drawing members from a wide area, many of whom meet
each week to paint together. Members traditionally work in watercolour on hot-pressed
paper or vellum. The Society has been particularly successful at the Royal Horticultural
Society in London, receiving awards ranging from silver to silver-gilt and gold.
Members have also exhibited individually at these shows, being awarded the full
range of medals.