The Florilegium: Royal Botanical Gardens Sydney
I say confusing because I wasn’t sure how the commentary on the history of botany in Australia and the creating of their botanical gardens matched the watercolours. It was only later that I realised a Florilegium is a collection of paintings of plants and this set had been commissioned recently to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the opening of the gardens.
Checking back on my notes I now realise there was a lot on Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist on Cooks first expedition to the area, who maintained an interest and on his return and sent botanists out on later expeditions to collect for himself and Kew Gardens. I encountered him again a few weeks later in the James Cook exhibition at the British Library.
The pictures were beautiful, detailed works showing the leaves, flowers and fruits of the plants. The descriptions were very detailed. There was an interesting video about how one of the artists have gone about finding a specimen and then painting it.
Closes 16 September 2018
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