Falloon Mossy Saxifrage Flower (Saxifraga planifolia), Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland

Wildflowers of England & Switzerland: Falloon 1892–1922

This watercolour forms part of a wonderful collection of botanical works by a female hand named Falloon. The identity of the artist is unknown, but notes accompanying the collection confirm that she was a woman, as was typical for botanical painters of this period. Falloon was prolific and encyclopaedic in the scope of her botanical endeavour, with each wildflower carefully annotated with its Latin name, date and location of drawing on its verso. The paintings in this collection were produced between 1892 and 1922, at locations across the UK and also in Switzerland. The wildflowers are drawn from life in Kent, Sussex, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Cornwall and Norfolk, as well as in Alpine Switzerland.

Given the focus of some of the flowers around Kent, the artist is perhaps related to (daughter of?) the Vicar at Christ Church, Dover, Rev Hugh Falloon (b.1842), son of William Marcus Falloon, Canon of Chester. There is a record in the Dover Express that Rev Hugh Falloon was at a chaplaincy in Switzerland in the early 1900s.

In an age before the widespread use of documentary photography, hand-drawn botanical illustrations of this type were an important intersection between the realms of art and science—combining the Romantic love for nature with the interest in travel and exploration fostered by Victorian industry and mechanisation. This period saw a popular fascination for the fauna and flora of the Alps; exploration and study of the mountains opened up new fields of scientific and artistic interest, and new Alpine resorts were made accessible to the growing middle classes by developments in the railway networks. Alpine plants are striking for the key role they play in fragile mountain ecosystems—their delicate, colourful blooms contrasting with the hostile mountain environment.

This was also a time when flower-rich grasslands and meadows were a common sight in Britain: observing wildflowers was a feature of everyday rural life, and popular knowledge and appreciation of the simple things growing around us was much greater. Paintings of this sort are an important record of our flora at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century; it is estimated that over 97% of Britain's wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s.