English Wildflowers: D.H. Duplock
This painting comes from a charming collection of botanical works that we have for sale by the hand of Doris H. Duplock of Sheffield. Each flower study is inscribed below with its common name, showing the artist's interest in the increasingly popular science of plant classification. The use of the common name rather than the Latin name, gives these studies a humble charm, embodying as they do the intersection of domestic and scientific spheres for British women in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Botanical illustration dates from as far back as four thousand years ago, when the agricultural civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt produced plant drawings. The practice continued in ancient Greece in connection with herbal medicine. It was only in the 18th and 19th centuries, however, that botanical illustration became an art in its own right, playing an important role in world exploration. European travellers were returning from afar with plant and seed samples, which were cultivated in landowners’ gardens. Botanical artists were often commissioned to catalogue their collections, and botanical classification was becoming an increasingly sophisticated science. This professional cataloguing had a profound and enduring influence on the artistic pursuits and tastes of the wider public.
