Arthur Harry Church: The Anatomy of Flowers - Hardcover

Church, A.H.; Mabberley, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1858941164 ISBN 13: 9781858941165

Publisher: Merrell Publishers Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

Contains some of the finest botanical illustrations of the 20th century.

About this title

From the Publisher:

The exquisite botanical illustrations of Arthur Harry Church
The revolutionary drawings of Arthur Harry Church (1865–1937) are considered some of the finest botanical illustrations of the twentieth century. By dissection and the study of flowers at different stages of their development, he was able to portray their mechanisms in words and in brilliant illustrations that exposed their internal structures. His mastery of microtechnique lends a hallucinatory clarity and razor-sharp edge to the many sections and diagrams of flowers that he produced to accompany his elegant studies.

Church’s life was marked by tragic events and disappointments. Immured in the Department of Botany at Oxford, which was then in the Botanic Garden, he was, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the most knowledgeable yet least travelled botanist in Britain. An academic recluse, he took solace from the analysis of the structure of plants, particularly their flowers, which he considered machines for ensuring successful sexual reproduction. His clinical attitude belies the freshness and boldness of the spectacular illustrations, which Church considered mere by-products of his science.

In this, the first full account of the artist, described by House and Garden as "lush and sensual ... gorgeous", David Mabberley discusses Church’s remarkable output in the context of his scientific work and of the biological science of his era. Most of the drawings in this volume remained unpublished while Church was alive and are published here for the first time; they demonstrate the modernity of his technique and style, which sometimes recall the work of Georgia O’Keeffe.

About this edition

• Publisher: Merrell Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1858941164
• ISBN 13: 9781858941165
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128