The Art of Botanical Illustration

Collins New Naturalist #14

by Wilfrid Blunt, William T. Stern

Comprehensive and very readable historical and artistic survey of botanical illustration.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Gardening, Science, Guides, Natural History, Plants

385 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

note: This profile is for the artist and gardener. For the poet go here: Wilfrid Scarwen Blunt

Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt was an artist, art teacher, author and curator of the Watts Museum near Guildford.
Blunt received a scholarship to Marlborough College where he studied between 1914 and 1920.
After a year at Worcester College, Oxford, Blunt switched to the Atelier Moderne in Paris to become an artist. By the following year he was an engraving student at the Royal College of Art, London where he received an Associates degree in 1923.
Blunt joined Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, as its art instructor in 1923. He spent the year 1933 on leave training as a concert singer in Italy and Germany, but pursued singing only avocationally. Europe broadened his cultural outlook enough that returning to a provincial school was no longer rewarding. Blunt researched and published work on the architect William Wilkins, who had designed the buildings of Haileybury in 1806. The previous year, a family connection got him a position of second drawing master at Eton College.
In 1950, Blunt wrote his most acclaimed book The Art of Botanical Illustration, together with W.T. Stearn, for which he was awarded the Veitch Gold Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society. At Eton he encouraged italic handwriting, publishing the book Sweet Roman Hand on the subject in 1952. Blunt retired from Eton in 1959 and joined the Watts Gallery Museum in Compton, near Guildford, as a curator. When he retired from the Gallery in 1983 he was allowed to live in the curator's house until his death. His brothers were Christopher Evelyn Blunt, a noted numismatist, and Anthony Blunt, the eminent art historian (and spy).

source:Wilfrid Blunt

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive and densely written tome which examines botanical illustrations as far back as the images scratched onto bones in the paleolithic era! It has numerous black and white illustrations scattered through the text as well as 46 colour plates. While the writing style is somewhat dated, and since it was published in 1950, it obviously doesn't include any of the more modern botanical artists, it is still a worthwhile read for the keen student of botanical art.

The overview of botanical art from 1900-1950 is somewhat cursory - Blunt takes the view that it is too soon "to attempt to give a balanced account of recent work", but that seems like a poor excuse. I found the way the illustrations related to the text to be quite annoying - there doesn't seem to be any attempt to put illustrations in the relevant section of the book, and Blunt regularly compares pictures in two different sections, meaning you have to do a lot of tedious flicking through the pages to find the right illustrations. He also spends a lot of time making points about illustrations which are not included (he does tell us in which library or archive they were housed in 1950, but that probably wasn't much help then and is even less help now!) while not giving information about some of the illustrations that are included.

These issues mean that the book doesn't quite rate 5 stars, but it is still well worth reading for a keen student of the history of botanical art, although those with only a passing interest will probably find this to be more information than they need!

[Happy When · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the version I read by Blunt - The one I read was a bigger volume. Same title though.