Helen Bynum and William Bynum | 2023
This is a visual compendium of botanical sketches, many specially photographed, providing a revealing insight into the immediate responses of artists encountering the glories of the plant world.
While highly finished drawings and paintings frequently feature in histories of botanical art, the preparatory sketches, first impressions and creative thoughts on paper behind them are rarely seen and have often remained hidden and locked away.
Botanical Sketchbooks gloriously brings these personal and vividly spontaneous records back into the light. In a series of biographical portraits organized thematically into four sections, the book illuminates various intriguing characters from many different countries and cultures, including Germany, France, Italy, America, Australia, Japan and China.
Sketchbooks are properly joined by notebooks, journals, albums, loose pieces of paper, works on vellum, manuscripts, letters, herbarium sheets, and marginalia – even one drawing on the back of an envelope.
Turning the pages of this book will invite you to relive extraordinary experiences, imagine lost worlds, and immerse yourself in the endeavours, observations, and motivations of the makers of such beautiful and enchanting art.
Bibliography
Bynum, H. and Bynum, W. (2023) Botanical Sketchbooks. Thames & Hudson.
Kruf Huyssons 