Treasures of Botanical Art reveals the history, science and beauty of botanical painting, and celebrates the inauguralexhibition of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew. Extensively illustrated and elegantly designed, it features some 200 paintings and drawings from both the Kew and Shirley Sherwood collections which reflect the richness of botanical art as a whole. The book provides an overview of the most significant artists from the 1600s through to the present day and demonstrates the fundamental importance of art to science.

Author Biography

Martyn Rix has worked for the Royal Horticultural Society and has co-authored many books on horticulture with Roger Phillips. He is editor of 'Curtis's Botanical Magazine' published by Kew, the longest continuously running botanical periodical in the world, founded in 1787, which places special emphasis on botanical illustration. Martyn has travelled widely around the world collecting and photographing plants, and designing and planting gardens. In 2002 he was awarded the Gold Veitch Memorial Media for services to Horticulture.Dr Shirley Sherwood travels extensively and has been collecting contemporary botanical drawings since 1990. Her comprehensive collection includes work by artists living in thirty different countries and documents the emergence of a new wave of botanical painters and the renaissance of their art form and is arguably the most important private collection of twentieth century botanical art in the world.