South American botanical art from the past and the present, will be on display at Kew Gardens’ Shirley Sherwood Gallery from Saturday, with the exhibition featuring works from the historic Mutis Collection.

Sixty two paintings from the collection have been lent to the Old and New South American Botanical Art exhibition by Madrid’s Real Jardín Botánico.

They will be shown alongside 68 contemporary pieces from the Shirley Sherwood Collection, owned by Dr Shirley Sherwood, who funded the building of Kew’s state-of-the art botanical art gallery which opened in 2008.

The Mutis Collection is comprised of botanical artworks that were created from 1783- 1816 when Spaniard José Celestino Mutis led the Royal Botanical Expedition of the New Kingdom of Granada (present day Colombia).

Mutis was charged with the task of recording the plants of the Spanish colony, and he established an art school where local men were trained to illustrate the expedition’s findings. More than 6,500 works were sent back to the archives of the Real Jardín Botánico, but the paintings were not published until 1952.

This Kew Gardens show is the first time that a significant number have ever been put on display, and Dr Sherwood says she is thrilled to welcome them to Kew.

“I‘m very excited because this is the first time the paintings have been out of Spain, and I think they are remarkable,” she says.

“I was given a book about Mutis in 1992 and when I started spending a lot of time in Madrid, I began talking to the people at Real Jardín Botánico.

“The exhibition has taken some time to pull off, but it has come at just the right moment.”

The artworks have been beautifully preserved as, although Mutis was not an artist, he paid great attention to the expedition’s materials, and ensured that high quality paper was used.

For the paints, he experimented with pigments extracted from plants and minerals, and this resulted in vividly coloured paintings which still retain their vibrancy today.

Dr Sherwood handpicked the works from The Mutis Collection for the Kew show, which will complement art from her own collection by modern botanical artists such as Margaret Mee and Etienne Demonte.

Was she like a kid in a sweetshop when she was let loose to seach through the huge Spanish archive?

“You’re absolutely right,” she replies, with a grin. “That is exactly what it was like!”

Old and New South American Botanical Art, The Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens, May 8 to August 8. The International Garden Photographer of the Year exhibition is also currently running at Kew.

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