ILLUSTRATED FLORA OF EAST TEXAS - Brit - Botanical Research ...

BOTANICAL ART IN EAST TEXAS/INTRODUCTION 259
BOTANICAL ART IN EAST TEXAS
Botanical art has a rich history stretching back thousands of years to the early Egyptians
and even before. Since plants were such an important contributor to the development of
human civilization, it is not surprising that they were among the earliest subjects of artistic
expression. After the invention of the printing press, the first books concerning plants were
the herbals, which were works primarily about medicinal plants. While the earliest herbals
were merely copies of ancient manuscripts from the early Greeks (e.g., Dioscorides’ De
Materia Medica, written about 60 A.D.), by the sixteenth century, botanists had begun to
study living plants, and the illustrations in herbals had become increasingly accurate. The
oldest illustration included in the Illustrated Flora of East Texas (of Zea mays, corn, in the
Poaceae; see p. 1105) is from such an herbal, De Historia Stirpium. This work was published
in 1542 by Leonhard Fuchs, who used living plants for his illustrations (Snyder 2001).
Since that time, a wealth of excellent botanical art has been produced, including the category
frequently referred to as botanical illustration (for further information see Holmgren &
Angell 1986; Blunt 1994; West 1996; Saunders 1995; de Bray 2001). According to Snyder
(2001), “The primary goal of botanical illustration is not art, but scientific accuracy. It must
portray a plant with the precision and level of detail for it to be recognized and distinguished
from another species.” Thus, botanical “art” and botanical “illustration,” while in
many ways synonymous or overlapping, can have quite different goals. Nonetheless,
botanical illustration is indeed art in the best sense of that word.
Numerous botanical artists and illustrators have used the rich flora of East Texas in their
works of art. Beginning with the earliest collections of East Texas plants by European
botanists (Jean Louis Berlandier, Thomas Drummond) in the late 1820s and early 1830s,
artists had access to East Texas plants. Most of the early collections were sent to European
botanists, such as Alphonse de Candolle and Sir William Jackson Hooker, who commissioned
paintings and illustrations for their scientific publications. A good example of an East Texas
plant drawn for a scientific work is the painting of Lupinus texensis (Texas bluebonnet)
(Fig. 159) published by W.J. Hooker in 1836 in Curtis’ Botanical Magazine. While the identity
of the artist is not absolutely certain, the bluebonnet painting was probably by Walter
Hood Fitch (Hemsley 1915), one of the finest and most prolific botanical illustrators of all
time. Fitch drew over 2,700 illustrations for Curtis’ Botanical Magazine and during his lifetime
produced a total of about 12,000 drawings and diagrams (Hemsley 1915; Desmond
1992; Lewis 1992).
While it is beyond the scope of this work to fully cover botanical art in East Texas, a few
of the Texas artists and illustrators with which we are familiar are mentioned below, and
examples of their art are provided if available. Those still working in Texas are listed first,
followed by those of the past.
Probably the two best known contemporary botanical artists/illustrators depicting East
Texas plants are Linny Heagy and Bruce Lyndon Cunningham.
LINNY HEAGY (commercial arts degree, John Herron Art Institute of Indiana University) (see
Fig. 160), professional artist, illustrator, and graphic designer, has worked extensively on
Texas plants. For Shinners & Mahler’s Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas she created 226
original line drawings, painted the art for the dust jacket and the frontispiece, and served
as creative director/art director for the whole volume. Likewise, for this Illustrated Flora of