Whimsy: Botanical Art & Illustration

This annual juried exhibition from the School of Botanical Art & Illustration features the student's best achievements. At the same time that artists are drawing on technical skill, they also rely on botanical knowledge. Selections focus on the unusual.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, The Art of Botanical Illustration is considered the definitive work on the subject, providing a comprehensive, critical and well-illustrated survey of the portrayal of plants through more than three thousand years. Revised and enlarged, this edition of the classic work has an extended chapter on the 20th century, and includes 126 color plates and 140 black and white illustrations, thus making available to the general public numerous examples of the work of great botanical illustrators past and present.

Of the first edition, published in 1950, the poet and gardening writer, Vita Sackville-West, after referring in The Observer to the wealth of illustration and the fascination of the text, then said, "Let no one think this is a book only for the specialist. It is essential for the specialist, certainly, but it is also for all the flower-lovers and all those who enjoy the by-ways of biography and the added attraction of good writing".

The Art of Botanical Illustration