During the 17th century, illustrations of plants were mostly drawn for medicinal and botanical research rather than as works of art. The particularly detailed renderings of flora by botanist and ...

WASHINGTON — From her fifth-floor office in the National Museum of Natural History, Alice Tangerini has a stellar view: to the right, Constitution Avenue runs in front of the Classical Revival facade ...

"What does it take to paint a wildflower that blooms for a single day in a deep forest? For Mary Vaux Walcott, it involved spending up to seventeen hours a day out of doors with her paintbox to ...

Sketch of a peony from The Florist (1760) (all images courtesy Peter H. Raven Library/Missouri Botanical Garden) “My personal theory is that in this mid-18th-century time of worldwide exploration, ...

Botanical subjects have long inspired artists, with illustrations of plants dating back to 1465 BC in ancient Egypt. Specific plants used for medicinal purposes were compiled into "herbals" as early ...

Take a look at a garden or landscape. You probably see some plants. Now focus in on one plant. Depending on the season, you might see stems, leaves, buds, flowers, seeds. You might note spines and ...

In 1901, a petite, independent-minded woman arrived at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney to begin work as their first botanical illustrator. A gifted artist, Margaret Flockton at 40 wore the demure ...

In 2002, Hemlata Pradhan was returning home to Kalimpong in the eastern Himalaya region of India, after completing her master’s in natural history illustration at the Royal College of Art in London.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all,” wrote John Keats. The famous words come from his 1820 poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, but they are a fitting description for the practice of botanical art and ...