Gardens in Perpetual Bloom Botanical Illustration in Europe and America, 1600-1850
Nancy Keeler
Published by MFA Publications. Available exclusively through Distributed Art Publishers
Publish Date — January 2010 (UK and USA)
Dimensions — 136 pages, 229 x 191mm (7½ x 9in.), portrait
Illustrations — 120 colour illustrations
Paperback price — US$24.95
ISBN — 978-0-87846-749-5
Trade Orders — Please visit our Trade Orders section
Sales Points
Features over 90 wonderful botanical illustrations, ranging over three centuries, from the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Includes works by Basil Besler, Nicolas Robert, Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer and Pierre-Joseph Redouté
About the Book
This book presents wonderful botanical illustrations, mainly hand-coloured prints, from 35 antiquarian volumes in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The first in a series of books featuring works from the Museum’s collections, it will be published to accompany an exhibition being presented at MFA Boston’s sister’s museum in Nagoya, Japan.
Perhaps the most celebrated flower painter in Western art, Jean-Baptiste Redouté defined the botanical artist as one “whose paintbrushes give lasting existence to the ephemeral gifts of Flora”, and throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the “golden age” of botanical illustration, the main goal of the artists and printmakers was to bring the garden alive on the page. As the examples in this catalogue illustrate, botanical art is both an exact scientific record and a thing of beauty.
