The RHS acquisition

Dahlia 'Twynings After Eight'

Heidi was honoured to have a painting acquired by the Royal Horticultural Society - her painting Dahlia 'Twynings After Eight'.

The painting has been purchased by the RHS Lindley Library, whose extensive collection of botanical art is of great significance. The Lindley Library has over 30,000 original botanical illustrations. It is one of the most comprehensive botanical art collections in the UK.

The collection of original drawings dates from the early 17 th century and includes pieces by the pre-eminent painters of their day, such as Georg Dionysus Ehret, Franz and Ferdinand Bauer, Margaret Meen and Rory McEwen.

The collection also embraces contemporary painters, many of whom have been awarded gold medals for their exhibits of botanical art at RHS shows.

To be included in this eminent list of painters is an honour for a botanical painter, and Heidi is thrilled with the acquisition of a painting by this collection.

The Lindley Library has also purchased the preliminary sketches for this piece, with a view to increase awareness of the process that botanical artists take to reach their final work. The original and sketches have been shown publicly at the Library.

2017

Exhibition of Dahlia 'Twynings After Eight'

From the RHS website, 2018:

“On Friday 18th May, Botanical Art is being celebrated worldwide. In a collaborative project, Botanical Art Worldwide sees botanical artists and organisations from 25 different countries submit their best pieces of botanical artwork depicting Native Flora. These artworks will be exhibited around the world on 18th May to create a global event.

As part of this project, artists from England and Wales have contributed to an exhibition of 40 botanical artworks which be on display in the Ruskin Library at the University of Lancaster from 18th May. The exhibition, "In Ruskin's Footsteps" has been organised by the newly formed Association of British Botanical Artists (ABBA). To coincide with this event, the RHS Lindley Library will be presenting a slideshow with 1000 image from Botanical Art Worldwide, including the 40 images from ‘in Ruskin’s Footsteps’ on 18th May.

There will also be an opportunity to join a curated tour of artworks from the RHS Lindley Art Collection on this day. This will include the unique opportunity to see Lindley Library’s most recent acquisition, Dahlia ‘Twynings After Eight’. For the first time at the RHS, this watercolour painting by Heidi Venamore, will be on display alongside the preliminary sketches for this piece."

More about the painting

This striking Dahlia is most unusual, having a single form white flower, but dramatic near-black leaves. The painter discovered this plant at the gardens at Highgrove, the country seat of HRH The Prince of Wales, during a garden visit in summer 2016, and took home two plants from the shop. The stark white flowers stood proudly against the dark bushy foliage, and it was the perfect garden plant, as well as painting specimen.

The leaves are fascinating. They are a mix of violet, red, brown and blue moving into black, but with a green base. The newer the leaves, and the closer to the base the greener and fresher they appear. Towards the top of the plant, they appear blackish-purple. A wonderful foil for the white flowers.

The flowers are of single form with light pink tracings over the more prominent veins, especially from behind. Like many others in the Asteraceae family, the flower heads are held together by a strong bract, with colours from light gold/green to deep violet.

The emerging buds are plump and rounded. Once the flower has finished, the closed bract (looking deceptively bud-like) is elongated into a pointier shape (see closed ‘bud’ top right) and plainer/darker in colour.

The flowers, at full blush, have a rich yellow centre packed with disc florets. These are quite disciplined and bright at the early stages, but become increasingly more ragged as the flower ages (top right).

The yellow/green blush which appears to leak onto the ray flowers (petals) becomes more yellow as they age.

Around 15 hours was spent in collecting specimens, drawing, colour matching and working out composition.

Allowing some leaves and flowers to fade towards the back of the composition would help provide the impression of depth, so those elements were selected for lighter treatment. Stem cross-overs would have been confusing to the observer, so were limited to those necessary.

The drawing ended up being a brain-teaser, with similar but sufficiently distinct elements repeated throughout. Stem size varied according to the strength required of each stem (supporting flowers, leaves or further stems) and discipline was required to maintain the relativity of stem size.

For a full description of the technique involved in how this painting was prepared and executed, click here.