Botanical Beauty
Treasures from the French Society of Botanical Illustration Published by Steidl/Société Française d’Illustration Botanique, Paris.
Text by Agathe Haevermans, Francis Hallé, Karl Lagerfeld, Sam McKnight, Véronique Mure, Elisabeth Quin. An exquisitely designed overview of contemporary botanical painting from France This book presents the extraordinary beauty of an eclectic range of botanical specimens, both familiar and exotic. The 89 intricate illustrations are each by a different member of the French Society of Botanical Illustration, an institution created in 2011 from a passion for all things flora, and with the ambition to reassert the great tradition of French botanical drawing.
These glorious images are realized in watercolor, colored pencil, gouache and graphite, and reveal a dizzying spectrum of plants—from magnolias, camellias and agapanthus to peach, grapes, asparagus, walnut, chestnut and palm trees. Whether an illustration captures the ruby drops of a raspberry, the feathery petals of poppies or a shiny stalk of bamboo, the results convey not only the precise physical characteristics and charm of their subjects, but also the patience and verve of their creators.
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