The word contemporary has the dictionary meaning of or relating to the same period. In that sense contemporary botanical art can relate to several different periods in its entire history. Let me describe here in brief the path that contemporary botanical art has charted right from ancient times till now.
The first renderings of identifiable plants appeared in ancient times on Greek vases, Roman mosaics, and Egyptian tombs. In medieval days collections of plant illustrations were known as herbariums. People in those times had a great interest in medicinal plants and cataloging such plants through illustrations helped in developing the knowledgebase.
Later on, with the appearance of the Renaissance, much more stress was laid on depicting plant illustrations as naturally as was possible with the painting tools available in those days. In the 15th and the early part of the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer took botanical art to an entirely new level, one that depicted plants very close to their originals.
In this period, people moved from simply growing vegetables and herbs to a wide variety of plant collections. Naturally their depictions through illustrations also received an impetus. The 16th century and the first half of the ensuing one saw the frequent use of watercolors and etchings. Claude Aubriet, Daniel Rabel, and Nicholas Robert were the contemporary botanical artists of that period.
In the late seventeenth century and the early part of the following one, Huysum, a Dutch painter took botanical illustration to a new height of realism showing life-like vividness. His paintings depicted water droplets and insects in realistic renderings.
Simon Verelist, another Dutch exponent of contemporary botanical art, concentrated on painting bouquets. Laureus van der Vinne almost in the same period in Holland concentrated on close-ups of landscapes that included highly focused renderings of flowers and grass tufts.
In the nineteenth century, Jacob Marrell provided a fillip to the painting of solely tulips in mass. Maria Sybille Merian, his stepdaughter, was equally adept at painting insects as she was at flowers.
George Ehret, a German painter, who lived in England, and was almost a contemporary of Marrell developed the use of beautiful water colors in rendering botanical art. He also learnt Botany in depth and made use of a microscope to study botanical components and structure.
A famous French painter, Pierre-Joseph RedoutE made great use of watercolors in rendering the botanical collections of Josephine Boneparte at Malmaison. His association with a learned Botanist, LiHeritier, helped him to paint the botanical art with a great degree of accuracy. In the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, it became a practice of contemporary botanical artistes to travel vast distances just to see and paint an exotic specimen of plant life.
The history of different periods of contemporary botanical art is replete with the various stages of its gradual development. We have become aware of this thanks to Shirley Sherwood, an Oxford-based botanist. She painstakingly collected contemporary botanical art from different periods and has displayed it in exhibitions around the world for our benefit.
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