If you have a gallery that meets the necessary security requirements, starting this summer, you can hire and display 40 prints by the renowned botanical photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932) for a month at a cost of just £750. Absolute bargain. Karl Blossfeldt is a master botanical photographer. His talent ensured his works remain timeless classics. …
One of the most magical, evocative, botanical artworks ever created? Matisse’s Trivaux Pond (1916/17) was painted in a public park on the outskirts of Paris and not as you might expect in wilder environs. You need to look closely to work out the location of the water, using the reflected vegetation as a guide. Currently on …
Franz Eugen Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen or Medicinal Plants was published in 1887 in Germany. It comes in four volumes and includes over 300 detailed, beautiful, botanical illustrations of plants. Below we supply 115 from Volume 2. See previous post for Volume 1 and associated book and source details. The age of this book is over 75 …
Part one of a two-part series of tree paintings. Today we feature female painters and then on Monday it’s the men. The aim is to show comparative renderings of these spectacular plants by some of the most renowned female artists ever. Although we have numbered them, this is not a rank, just a way to …
Beautiful old botanical paintings of cacti today from the book: “Iconographie descriptive des cactees, ou, Essais systematiques et raisonnes sur l’histoire naturelle, la classification et la culture des plantes de cette famille“. Which translates (roughly) to: Featured iconography cacti, or systematic and reasoned essays on natural history, classification and cultivation of plants in this family. …
Franz Eugen Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen or Medicinal Plants was published in 1887 in Germany. It comes in four volumes and includes over 300 detailed, beautiful, botanical illustrations of plants. Below we supply 88 from Volume 1. While the book was written by Kohler, the pictures were drawn by artists L. Müeller and C.F. Schmidt. They were …
If you are in need of a quick run through of the state flowers of America then philately will get you everywhere. What nicer way to learn than by exploring the beautiful postal stamps below. You might even discover the state birds along the way. Philately is the study and collection of postage stamps and …
Cherry blossom festivals are soon to get underway all over the northern hemisphere. In some places they are small events, in others much bigger affairs. The more cherry trees in an urban area often denotes the likelihood of a festival. In essence, the purpose of these festivals, adopted from Japanese culture, is to celebrate feelings …
Chris Ofili lives and works in Barbados and Trinidad. The photographed plant segments below are taken from his thrilling artworks currently on show at Victoria Miro, London.
Read the poem, take the walk, look out for plants. The poem Where should we meet but in this shabby park Where the railings are missing and the branches black? Industrial pastoral, our circuit Of grass under ash, long standing water And unimportant sunsets flaring up Above the half-dismantled fair. Our place Of in-betweens, abandoned …