Ehret's Flowering Plants (Victoria and Albert Natural History Illustrators)
Eighteenth century watercolorist Georg Dionysius Ehret loved drawing, not growing, plants. When apprenticed to his uncle, a gardener, young Ehret considered this period "three years of 'slavery' and continued throughout to draw plants at every opportunity," writes Saunders. A curator at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Saunders offers a concise introductory essay on the artist, who publicized Carl Linnaeus's system of botanical classification and approached plant illustration "like a painter of human portraits . . . improving upon nature, smoothing out the imperfections and showing his subjects at their best." The 40 color plates, from the museum's collection, range from the common carnation to newly discovered exotics like the American Turkscap lily. Beautifully reproduced, they convey the extraordinary quality of Ehret's watercolors.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.