Herbarium Specimen Painting page 2 (56cm x 77cm) by Rachel Pedder-Smith

The Herbarium Specimen Painting (2006-2009)
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The painting as a whole displays one or more specimens representing each flowering plant family, in DNA classification order.

Rachel Pedder-Smith’s 18ft Herbarium Specimen Painting, which is on display at Kew Gardens, is not only scientifically accurate, it’s an exquisite and groundbreaking work of art.
Herbarium Specimen Painting at Kew Gardens | The Telegraph

At five meters long, this large-scale watercolour montage of plant bits is a rather thrilling piece of art, with some equally impressive botanical credentials: Over 700 carefully chosen Kew Herbarium specimens were used in the making, painstakingly chosen and then painted by Pedder-Smith. Some of these had been collected by British natural history luminaries, including Darwin, Hooker and Bentham. A minimum of one plant part from each of the 506 flowering plant families classified under the APG II system are depicted, making it a truly global expression of plant diversity, as well as a striking visual representation of the depth of botanical treasure held by Kew Gardens.
​Rachel Pedder-Smith brings life to dried plant specimens | Plant Curator

It contains:
- at least one specimen from each flowering plant family in the chosen classification system (506 families)
- 703 separate herbarium specimens
- at least one specimen collected in each year since the Kew herbarium was founded in 1853
 - specimens collected by natural historians such as Darwin, Spruce, Welwitch, Hooker, Bentham as well as specimens collected from important expeditions
- specimens collected by current Kew staff who can recount stories of the day they collected the specimen
- specimens which are considered to be the oldest specimens in the herbarium, dating from late 1696 and 1700
- a section of an olive leaf wreath collected from an Egyptian tomb
- an extinct plant
- plants used for human consumption

• The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew ​Exhibition Archive

About Rachel Pedder-Smith
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The Herbarium Specimen Silk Scarf

Livistona chinensis (Chinese fan palm), attributed to Vishnuprasad, c. 1825

​The Garrison Chapel, Chelsea Barracks

The entrance to the Garrison Chapel at Chelsea Barracks. Photo credit Jack Hobhouse.

Garden Museum, Lambeth

McEwen’s luminous depictions of flowers, leaves, butterflies, and decaying vegetables breathed new life into the genre. Infusing modern creativity into the centuries-old genre with his distinctive use of light and space, McEwen blurred the boundaries between botanical illustration and modern art.

Two paintings by Rory McEwen - 'Old Fashioned Rose Beech Mast & Clover Leaf' and 'Old English Florist Tulip' (Shirley Sherwood Collection)

Exhibitions about India at Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew

(Left) The Singh Twins and (right) Flora Indica

Opium Poppy Papaver somniferum, Phansakdi Chakkaphak

Gillian Barlow at the presentation of the new Royal Signature Painting to King Charless III by the RHS

What is a "Royal Signature" painting?
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The painting’s main colour palette is gold, with touches of crimson, vivid pink, coral pink, light mauve and purple and the plants featured include: Magnolia sprengeri, Magnolia campbellii, Quercus rubra ‘Bolte’s Gold’, Acer palmatum ‘Sango-Kaku’, Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’, Lindera obtusiloba, Geranium pratense ‘Wisley Blue’, Acer × conspicuum ‘Phoenix’, Cornus ‘Norman Hadden’, Geranium sanguineum, 
Geranium × oxonianum, Corydalis flexuosa, Narcissus ‘February Silver', 
Narcissus ‘Jetfire’ and Crocus.

Exhibition of the Royal Signature Paintings
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About Gillian Barlow GM (1994, 1997, joint 1999); Veitch GM
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I feel privileged that Susannah agreed to collaborate on a talk about her work, in August last year.​ To honour her contribution to botanical art, I have made the full length version of this talk available on YouTube.

​Julia Trickey

Thank you Katherine for a lovely tribute. Susannah was farewelled last week at St Judes in Bowral. Her great capacity for friendship, kindness and compassion throughout her life was celebrated as generously as she had taught, and lived. She will be missed, but remembered with love by so many.

"As a painter, Blaxill takes ordinary produce and elevates it, with extraordinary skill, to the extraordinary. In effect, art overtakes science, for as concerned as Blaxill is with getting her botanical subjects correct, she is fascinated as an artist by the colours and forms of plant growth and decay. She is inspired by the perfection of imperfection and in Blaxill's work I notice for the first time the beauty to be found in the decaying process."

"There is an extraordinary complexity within the simplicity of the subject matter and that is the gift which commands the viewer to look again."

"What makes Blaxill an outstanding artist... is that she compels the viewer to see the everyday in a new way... The good and the great have always had this capacity to take the obvious and infuse it with all the wonder of creative discovery. "
Michael Reid, Lecturer at The College of Fine Art, University of NSW, Australia & Art Critic, The Weekend Australian.

Susannah Blaxill 2018

I believe she is one of today's best botanical artists and an example of Australia's depth of quality in this field.
Dr Shirley Sherwood - about Susannah Blaxill - in Contemporary Botanical Artists

It is with great sadness that I inform you that artist, Susannah Blaxhill, has passed away on July 1 2025. After leaving high school in Armidale NSW she moved to England and ultimately became a world renowned botanical artist, creating the most intricately beautiful artworks, leading the way in depicting fruit and vegetables. I was privileged to be in Susannah’s class at school and to have lessons from her in the early days of her teaching botanical drawing......

About Susannah Blaxill
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While in England, I planted a garden in a rather unpromising sandy and very windy field in Norfolk.  Knowing little about plants I steeped myself in gardening literature and one of the spin offs of growing all sorts of plants, both flowers and vegetables was that I had time to examine them all in great detail. I had always drawn on and off through my school years but stopped when I embarked on tertiary education. As my gardening and drawing interests became my focus, I began to draw full time. 
Interview with Susannah Blaxill

Pears 1991, Watercolor 42.5 × 34.5 cm Exhibited in the 7th International Exhibition of Botanical Art at the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh (Lent by Jessica Tcherepnine)

Agapanthus africanus 2012, watercolour and gouache on vellum by Susannah Blaxill Collection of Shirley Sherwood Exhibited at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens in 2018 Photographed by me!

Susannah Blaxill is one of the best renowned botanical artists, whose reputation is recognized world-wide for her ability to take a moment in an ordinary plant form’s life cycle, anywhere from the beginning of growth to the dying and decaying plant, and turn it into a “portrait” that will take your breath away. 
Royal Botanic Garden Melbourne - Botanical Art 21 March 2011 (via Internet Archive)

​Susannah Blaxill's Botanical Art
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There is nothing worse than discovering that something is not right when 50%, or even worse 90% of the painting is completed. It is actually a waste of time to rush this early stage. 
Composition: Susannah on the importance of spending time working out the best way to portray the plant

Red Onion by Susannah Blaxill

I think that drawing and painting onion skin gives me more pleasure than almost anything else.  
Interview with Susannah Blaxill

White Orchids Number 1 by Susannah Blaxill Drawing in Charcoal - H100cms x W148cms

I often have students who to get the shadow they continue with the color that they've used in the darker part of the painting but for me it doesn't 
really work I want to tone it down considerably and change the color 
Susannah Blaxill talking in the video about how she works

It’s become one of Australia’s most internationally famous artworks, but few people have probably heard of Armidale born, self taught artist Susannah Blaxill.
​The Canberra Times

Beetroot by Susanna Blaxill Height 480 mm x Width 640 mm | Shirley Sherwood Collection

I'm guessing very many watercolour painters and others would probably think that Susannah has wonderful control over her watercolour glazes. Maybe that she applies a stipple in places using a brush designed for a miniaturist.

However yesterday I discovered that virtually all of this painting was painted using dry brush HATCHING techniques and optical colour mixes. Virtually anywhere I looked at the painting using my magnifier - apart from the leaf storks - I could see lots and lots of tiny hatching marks in different colours. None of this was apparent when viewed normally.
​Susannah Blaxill's beetroot and a magnifying glass 

''Look at every one of these green bits built up with 15 layers of paint,'' she added. ''And the same with the red. Then stand back and see how she uses the white of the paper.''
​A spot of light -- really just unpainted paper -- glowed from somewhere inside the beet, making the vegetable float in pure white space like an abstract object in a void.
Yet, ''Beetroot'' is more beetlike than any beet I have ever seen. Its crinkled red and green leaves, its vermilion stems edged with purple, the sheen on its rounded hairy root are accurate, yes. But there is an intimacy to this beet, a vigor so condensed that it verges on surreal.

​Susannah Blaxill - the teacher
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I have found over the years that it is more important to give students information and skills that they can build on rather than attempting to encourage them to produce finished paintings. ​
Susannah Blaxill on the importance of teaching and how to teach

Susannah Blaxill - Exhibitions
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A solo exhibition of her work in London in 1992 received rapturous reviews, including this one from the usually staid Country Life magazine: “Painted with a botanist’s eye and an artist’s visual sensibility, the isolated images start out from their black or white backgrounds and demand to be seen afresh; but we are not used to seeing ordinary vegetables presented in such an idealised and brazen way, and it is subtly disquieting,” wrote viewer Polly Chiapetta. “One almost wants to blush and avert one’s gaze.
The Canberra Times January 30th, 2006

Study of Peonies by Martin Schongauer
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"The Art of Botanical Illustration" by Wilfrid Blunt
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The original 1950 publication of my copy of "The Art of Botanical Illustration"

ESSENTIAL READING / HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 
This book - first published in 1950 - is probably the most famous book about the history of botanical art and illustrations and the artists and illustrators that produced it. 

This is the standard by which all other books about botanical illustration are judged.

​It represents a benchmark in terms of documenting botanical illustration and artists included in this book are worth noting.

(my summary review is now quoted on Amazon by the publishers!)

Book cover of (my copy of) the large 2nd edition published in 1994

Professor Steam, who was closely involved with the original publication, has revised this classic work, bringing the chapter on 20th century botanical illustration up to date, and including a great number of coloured illustrations.

Cover of the 2015 Print of The Art of Botanical Illustration

The cover of the 4th version

A very high standard of work (equivalent to at least a Silver RHS medal) is required to be selected to display botanical illustration, judged by the RHS. Emphasis is placed on botanical accuracy in combination with aesthetic appeal. Artists should present their work that is of the very highest quality and has been completed recently (and at least within 5 years
Botanical Art and Photography Show Artists Factsheet

Surjit Ghaley Riyait with two paintings from her exhibit of The Life Cycle Aesculus hippocastum Out of the six silver exhibits, the only one I really liked was this one.

Some context
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• A Gold medal exhibit has to be outstanding in all areas and really have the ‘wow’ factor.
• A Silver-Gilt medal is a very high award and still an exceptional achievement. In many cases a Silver-gilt will have only been missing a couple of elements that meant it was not quite a Gold.
• The Silver medal will usually have numerous areas for improvement.
• A Bronze medal is rarely awarded as the standard is generally so high, but it may be awarded if the artist has really only achieved one or two elements from the criteria.​
• RHS Botanical Art Show #3: Medals Awards and Feedback (2018)
  

Silver Gilt Medals

First Time Exhibitor Juliet Rowse with her Silver Gilt exhibit of Helleborus orientalis

Silver Medals
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One painting from the exhibit "The Life Cycle Aesculus hippocastanum" by Surjit Ghaley Riyalt

More about the 2025 exhibition + previous posts