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Prior to the invention of photography, botanical illustration was the only way of visually recording the world's many species of plant life. Today, science books are full of highly detailed photographs-often taken with a macro lens or even a microscope-allowing us to discover the fascinating forms of flora and fauna. However, before these advances in technology, it was artists and illustrators who were depended on to share the beauty of botany with the world. The job requires great artistic skill, attention to fine detail, and technical horticultural knowledge.

In the past, illustrations of plant life were used by physicians, pharmacists, botanical scientists, and gardeners for identification, analysis, and classification. While these works are not as relevant to researchers today, they have become an inspiration for artists who are paying homage to plant life in contemporary ways.

What is botanical illustration?

Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant life. The practice can be traced back to sometime between 50 and 70 CE when an illustrated book titled De Materia Medica was created by Greek botanist Pedanius Dioscorides to help readers identify plant species for medicinal purposes. The eighteenth century saw many advances in the printing processes, allowing colors and details of drawings to appear even more accurate on paper. As interest in botanical publications increased, the role of botanical illustrator came to be considered a respected profession.

Famous Botanical Artists of the Past

There are many artists and illustrators from around the world who made significant contributions to scientific publications on plant life. Read on to discover some of the most famous ones throughout history.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 - 1717)

Regarded as one of the greatest ever botanical artists, German artist Maria Sibylla Merian created stunning natural history paintings in her own distinct style. She's best known for illustrating the life cycle of an insect against the background of its host plant.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1766 - 1854)

Employed as a royal flower painter by both Marie Antoinette (the last Queen of France) and the Empress Josephine Bonaparte, French artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté is renowned for his paintings of roses, lilies, and other flowers-many of which remain popular today.

The Bauer Brothers (1750s - 1850s

Franz and Ferdinand Bauer both made an enormous contribution to the "golden century" of natural history illustration between 1750 and 1850.

Franz worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for over 50 years and was later employed as "Botanick Painter to his Majesty." He drew all the new flowering plants at Kew and specialized in painting orchids. His brother Ferdinand traveled with botanists and explorers to map and record the natural flora and fauna of Greece and Australia.

Pierre Jean François Turpin (1775 - 1840)

Frenchman Pierre Jean François Turpin was a self-taught artist from the Napoleonic era who is considered to be one of the greatest botanical illustrators. Both a botanist and a masterful watercolorist, the plant genus Turpinia is named in honor of his creative legacy.

Anne Pratt (1806 - 1893)

Anne Pratt is one of the best-known English botanical illustrators of the Victorian age. She contributed to the popularization of botany by writing and illustrating more than 20 books.

Marianne North (1830 - 1890)

Self-taught British artist Marianne North traveled the world painting plants and flowers. She produced 833 paintings from 17 countries in 14 years, depicting more than 900 species of plants. Her paintings are now housed in the Marianne North Gallery at Kew Gardens, London.

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)

Born in Germany in 1834, Ernst Haeckel spent his life researching flora and fauna "from the highest mountaintops to the deepest ocean." A biologist, naturalist, philosopher, and artist, his incredible drawings helped to educate the world about microscopic organisms that were previously unseen. His work has left a lasting legacy both in the scientific and artistic worlds and have even inspired the work of artists today.

Contemporary Botanical Artists

While traditional illustrations of the past were usually rendered with paint on paper, today's contemporary botanical art comes in a variety of styles and mediums.

Tiffany Bozic

Self-taught artist Tiffany Bozic's incredible illustrations are inspired by her "travels to wild places" and her exposure to various research specimens at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Rendered with watered-down layers of acrylic paint on panels of maple wood, each anatomically correct plant, flower, animal, and insect is painted with precise detail-just like vintage botanical illustrations in old science books. However, Bozic often adds her own surreal twist, depicting her earthly subjects as if they're from another reality.

Kate Kato

Artist Kate Kato crafts detailed paper sculptures based on various mushrooms, flowers, and insects found within the Welsh valley of her hometown. Influenced by her childhood fascination with botanical illustrations, Kato creates each work to accurately reflect the natural ephemera's true forms. Each work is made from recycled paper that the artist tints with natural dyes.

"I have always been fascinated by the natural world; a love instilled in me at a young age, and documenting what I discover has become my main motivation for creating my work," Kato reveals in an artist statement. "As a child I spent a lot of time collecting bits and pieces in tins or boxes which I would take with me on walks through parks or countryside. This has had a huge influence on my work along with my love of botanical illustrations, the natural sciences and the nostalgia of museum visits where, as a child, I would be mesmerized by the variety of exhibits and the way they were displayed. I tend to view my work as a 3D record of my knowledge and experiences of the natural world."

Zadok Ben-David

London-based artist Zadok Ben-David created an incredible, touring floor installation made up of up to 27,000 hand-painted steel etched flowers based on drawings from 19th Century Victorian encyclopedias. Titled Blackfield, the sprawling array of plant life appeared as black on one side, but when stood from the other side, a vibrant field of color was revealed. The project explored perception and perspective, and as well as life and death.

Rogan Brown

Just like the work of 19th-century biologist Ernst Haeckel, Rogan Brown's work explores the intricate forms found in microorganisms. The Anglo-Irish artist's series, Magic Circle, comprises hand- and laser-cut paper sculptures that capture the texture and patterns found in coral, bacteria, and microbes. Each elaborate bio-sculpture requires hours of precise cutting and layering of paper, resulting in a fascinating labyrinth of hypnotic white shapes. Although influenced by scientific drawings, Brown chooses to play with the imagination, creating his own versions of each natural form.

"I am inspired in part by the tradition of scientific drawing and model making, and particularly the work of artist-scientists such as Ernst Haeckel," Brown says. "But although my approach involves careful observation and detailed 'scientific' preparatory drawings, these are always superseded by the work of the imagination; everything has to be refracted through the prism of the imagination, estranged and in some way transformed."

Laura Hart

British glass artist Laura Hart explores the exotic beauty of orchids with her incredibly realistic botanical sculptures. Each perfectly crafted form depicts the flower's delicate petals, near-perfect symmetry, and vibrant colors and patterns. "My fascination with orchids spans decades and at one point I had nearly seventy in my conservatory," Hart reveals. "The explosion of color and perfume during the flowering months intoxicate the senses."

Each piece is scaled up to around 30cm, but still features true-to-form shapes and colors based around the different 28,000 known species of orchid. Hart says, "I endeavor to recreate these incredible flowers as faithfully and authentically as possible, whilst imbuing them with my own artistic interpretation."

This article has been edited and updated.

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300-Year-Old Botanical Illustrations and the Art They Inspire Today

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Botanical illustrations have been around for centuries. Take a look at this early form of documentation and the work of contemporaries who have expanded on it as an art form.

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Margaret Mee was both a botanical artist and a conservationist
who specialised in painting the flora of the Amazon Forest.
​She also made a significant contribution to the worlds of science and conservation.

This page is an introduction to Margaret Mee (1909 - 1988) and will be of interest to botanical artists and all those who enjoy botanical art. It provides links to online sites providing details about her life and work and exhibitions and books where you can see her paintings.

The banner image above is from the exhibition " Brazil: a powerhouse of plants: Margaret Mee, pioneering artist and her legacy" at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery (20 February 2016 to 29 August 2016)

Biography & Timeline (1909 - 1988)

REFERENCE:

A Chronology of Margaret Mee - An account of the life of Margaret Mee

Who was Margaret Mee? - Before the Amazon | Nonsuch expeditions

Archive of an Interview with Margaret Mee - transcript of the interview

Hunt Institute - Margaret Mee Page

Margaret Mee: artist and explorer - Kew Gardens

Margaret Mee : Oxford Biography Index entry - The Oxford Biography Index - A. McConnell, 2004, "Mee, Margaret Ursula (1909-1988)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

​Margaret Mee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia - Margaret Ursula Mee (1909 Chesham, England - 1988, England), was a botanical artist who specialized in plants from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Botanical artists: Margaret Mee | Making A Mark (2009)

Margaret Mee, botanical artist of the Amazon | Dunbarton Oaks

The Life Times and Works of Margaret Mee | Society of Botanical Artists (essay sample for Diploma Portfolio)

Artists Represented in the Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations - Margaret Ursula Mee

The Margaret Mee Facebook Page​

L. Gamlin, 1989, "Mourning the World's Loveliest Garden: review of 'Margaret Mee in Search of the Flower of the Amazon Forests'", New Scientist, 1693

T. Morrison, 1988, "Before the Amazon", Margaret Mee in Search of the Amazon Forests: 18-27

R. Schultes, 1990, "Margaret Mee and Richard Spruce", Naturalist, 115: 143-148.

Margaret Mee's Amazon - a Theme devised by Tony Morrison | Nonesuch

Mee, Margaret Ursula (1909-1988) on JSTOR

Margaret Mee and the Amazon Flora
​

For 30 years, Mrs. Mee devoted her life to traveling up the Amazon River and its various tributaries. She would head up river into a small boat by herself, with only a local pilot for companionship, occasionally with a friend or two. Mrs. Mee was not simply a traveler and explorer of new places; she was a painter who tried to create a unique record of the rare species of flowers of the Amazon Basin before they disappear under the onslaught of man. Her work has been compared to some of the masters at painting from nature.
an interview with the artist that was broadcast on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour in November 1988

The video below was made in Brazil - with a commentary from Alvaro Nunes - for the Senate TV during a commemorative exhibition in the National Museum in Brasília.

Mee had a long held ambition to illustrate a Moonflower (a night-blooming cactus) - and was ultimately successful in her quest.

In the early stages an extraordinary sweet perfume wafted from the flower, and we were all transfixed by the beauty of the delicate and unexpectedly large bloom ... Our vigil was long and I conclude that our intrusion had deterred the pollinator, upsetting the delicate balance between the plant and the animal which has taken tens of millions of years to evolve ... With the dawn the flower closed and we watched fascinated and humbled by the experience.
Margaret Mee

REFERENCE:

Margaret Mee's last Amazon journey - The Moonflower

Photos of the Moonflower cactus​​

​Photo of Margaret Mee on the final journey

Margaret Mee and the Moonflower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia - a 2012 Brazilian documentary film directed by Malu De Martino, about the work and legacy of British botanical artist Margaret Mee, who moved to Brazil in the 1950s

Margaret Mee - in pursuit of the moonflower cactus | Kew Library Art and Archives Blog

Selenicereus wittii (Cactaceae): An epiphyte adapted to Amazonian Igap inundation forests - By Wilhelm Barthlott1, Stefan Porembski1, Manfred Kluge2, Jrn Hopke3 and Loki Schmidt4 - Abstract The biology, ecology, and distribution ofSelenicereus (Strophocactus)wittii, one of the least known taxa ofCactaceae, are described.This epiphyte climbs ap

Selenicereus wittii {Cactaceae} Moonflower - EEB Greenhouse Accession Data for Selenicereus wittii :: Location: Neotropic: Guyana Highlands C

Margaret Mee's Paintings
​

"Unlike Amazon botanical artists before her, Margaret worked entirely from living plants. Her fifteen expeditions into the interior, mostly to Amazonia, involved travelling and living under the most primitive conditions. She would draw at night by torchlight to capture rare nocturnal flowers, and this immediacy gave her paintings an accuracy, depth, and colour unrivalled by her predecessors. Her travels coincided with the beginning of the commercial exploitation of the forest, and she expressed her fury at the damage caused to the land and its peoples" ODNB

Her approach to painting

Exhibitions of Paintings by Margaret Mee
​

Her work was acclaimed internationally by botanists and art critics alike.

"...they are splendid, magnificently composed, superbly reproduced... can stand without shame in the high company of such eighteenth-century masters as Georg Dionysius Ehret and Redoute"
Wilfrid Blunt

Below Shirley Sherwood talks about one of the paintings by Margaret Mee in her collection.

20th century

The Margaret Mee Trust and Fellowship Programme
​

The Margaret Mee Amazon Trust was founded in 1988 following discussions with Margaret and Greville Mee concerning the future of the magnificent Amazon Collection: 60 paintings of Amazonian plants by Margaret Mee. The MMAT was an educational charity dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of the conservation of Brazil's forests, especially in Amazonia. The Trust was based in the UK and its immediate objectives were to raise funds for i) the purchase of the Amazon Collection for deposit at Kew, and ii) the creation of a scholarship scheme, aimed at supporting forest conservation
​Kew Gardens - The Margaret Mee Fellowship Programme

The Margaret Mee Amazon Trust was being set up by Margaret Mee prior to her death. The intention was that it should purchase the Amazon Collection and assist Brazilian botanical students to study in the UK. The Trust was eventually founded in 1988. at Kew - just three weeks before age died as a result of a car crash.

The Margaret Mee Amazon Trust was officially launched, in the presence of the artist and her husband Greville, on the 9th November 1988 at the preview of the exhibition of the

The Margaret Mee Fellowship Programme was set up to honour her memory. Amazon Collection Research fellowships were discontinued in 2005 and the programme is now limited to a five-month artistic Fellowship (approx. 6500) which is awarded annually. Every year a student artist from Brazil travelled to London to train as a botanical artist at Kew Gardens. ​

Read more about the artists who benefited from the Scheme in Botanical Artists in South America

REFERENCE:

More Past Masters of Botanical Art & Illustration
​

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margaret mee and the moonflower
margaret mee biography

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margaret mee and the moonflower
margaret mee book

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Margaret Mee was both a botanical artist and a conservationistwho specialised in painting the flora of the Amazon Forest.​She also made a significant contribution to the worlds of science and conservation. This page is an introduction to Margaret Mee (1909 - 1988) and will be of interest to botanical artists and all those who enjoy botanical art.

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The Mantegna Tarocchi, also known as the Tarocchi Cards, Tarocchi in the style of Mantegna, is a double series of 50 instructional engravings each. And they are absolutely fascinating. Everything about them is mysterious - the authorship, their purpose their iconography.

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Speculative Everything book. Read 32 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. How to use design as a tool to create not only things but id...

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Speculative practice moves away from the consumerist role of design and uses speculation about potential futures, and, through the medium of design, deals with current social, economic and political relationships as well as our relationship with the natural environment. It also intends to move from the role that design has in presenting market-ready solutions and attempts to restore design’s foundations, such as discursiveness (analysis, reflection, examination of various possibilities, anticipation, etc.). Speculative Design practice has close connections with technology, which is not viewed as neutral, but rather as reflecting diverse political and ideological constellations within a society.
思辨实践摆脱了设计的消费主义角色，转而使用对潜在未来的猜测，并通过设计媒介处理当前的社会、经济和政治关系以及我们与自然环境的关系。它还打算摆脱设计在呈现市场就绪解决方案方面的作用，并尝试恢复设计的基础，例如话语性（分析、反思、对各种可能性的检查、预期等）。思辨设计实践与技术有着密切的联系，技术不被视为中立，而是反映了社会中不同的政治和意识形态星座。

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New Reflections on Speculativity - SpeculativeEdu

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SpeculativeEdu is an educational, project funded by ERASMUS+, the European Union programme for education, training, youth, and sport, with the aim of strengthening speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in the field of speculative design.

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On May 6, 1736, the polymath Benjamin Franklin informed readers of his Pennsylvania Gazette of a "Sea Monster" recently spotted in Bermuda, "the upper part of whose Body was in the Shape and about the Bigness of a Boy of 12 Years old, with long black Hair; the lower Part resembled a Fish". Apparently, the creature's "human Likeness" inspired his captors to let it live. A 1769 issue of the Providence Gazette similarly reported that crew members of an English ship off the coast of Brest, France, watched as "a sea monster, like a man" circled their ship, at one point viewing "for some time the figure that was in our prow, which represented a beautiful woman". The captain, the pilot and "the whole crew, consisting of two and thirty men" verified this tale.

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Mermaids and Tritons in the Age of Reason

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On May 6, 1736, the polymath Benjamin Franklin informed readers of his Pennsylvania Gazette of a "Sea Monster" recently spotted in Bermuda, "the upper part of whose Body was in the Shape and about the Bigness of a Boy of 12 Years old, with long black Hair; the lower Part resembled a Fish".

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cactus furry smash bros gijinka anthropomorphic animals tree art human traits garden plants pngtree

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Thermal image of temperature  Hot vs Cold

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Thermal image of temperature  Hot vs Cold

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Hot vs Cold. Mix it. Blue Lagoon. Thermal imaging

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Blue Lagoon, Iceland
December 2014
FLIR thermal camera

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Browsing Over a Century of Museum Popular Publications | AMNH

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Dive into AMNH history through its popular publications.

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From Bayan Zhurek, southeastern Kazakhstan (photo: K. Lymer and tracing by Z. Zhetybaev).

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Anthropomorphous figure

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Plants with anthropomorphic illustration

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Bakst. BALLETS RUSSES] BAKST (Léon) Published by Flammarion, 1977

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KeyWords:
Movement
Anthropomorphism

Body language

How to combine the movement of plants & human beings

what do plants dress/make up like?

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The encyclopedia of tarot / Kaplan, Stuart R

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This is a book related to Tarot Illustration History.
I recommend it because it states the relationships between Human beings and Plants, like a system showing us.

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Alexis Jamet

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Olaf Hajek is a German-based illustrator, painter, artist, graphic designer and author.

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Paris-based creative Marine Buffard spins a lot of plates. A graphic design graduate who now works in brand strategy alongside completing a PhD, when lockdown paused many of her projects she decided to add another practice to the pile, picking up illustration and animation.

Illustration was always a part of Marine's practice, "especially during my studies," she tells It's Nice That. Yet, like most creative passions we keep up with on the side, once Marine's job and studies began to take up more time it fell to the side. But during the quieter periods of 2020, the creative decided to dedicate more time to the practice, in turn utilising her Instagram account as a sort of illustrative diary.

A self-described "big night owl", Marine's Instagram first began as a diary of her trying to switch up her sleep pattern, adopting the username, "becoming a morning person". Waking up earlier and earlier to create, "this daily drawing practice was meant to build up a creative routine in order to induce inspiration in a moment were I lacked it, being stuck at home." Continually creating and sharing, illustration-focused opportunities soon began to appear for Marine, developing her craft as well as offering "a great way to keep busy and stay sane as we were stuck at home in Paris."

The result of creating on such a regular basis is a practice Marine describes as "some kind of ordinary life poetry". Stylistically this tends to come to life with "clear fine lines, bold blurry colours and movement", brought to life with a hypnotic looping animation style. The looping effect has also encouraged Marine to become a transition master, where a character's fuzzy jumper could expand into a mountainous landscape, for example. Her use of colour in these pieces is also very selective with black-and-white sketches always leading a piece, and colour only applied to further a quick loop's narrative.

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Marine Buffard on how becoming a morning person encouraged her creativity

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Wanting to switch up her sleeping pattern as a self-confessed night owl during lockdown, Marine found routine in returning to illustration and animation.

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Tarot cards built a harmonious scene between humans and nature