A Rare Bloom

Rare original orchid portraits from the greats of the genre, James Laird Macfarlane and Nellie Roberts. Working at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, they were amongst the earliest painters employed by the RHS to depict prize-winning orchids and were intrumental in defining the portrait model—a frontal view of the flower at natural size—that would become ubiquitous.