Plant PERSON of the day is: Barbara Everard

Barbara Everard

Last April I had the great privilege of meeting her son and staying at his home.  Airbnb and the universe somehow aligned the universe in a great way.  Her son, Martin, had a wonderful garden that had me very impressed as soon as we arrived.  I had no idea, at the time, who his mother was.  Just before we left he did bring out a lot of her original prints and let me look them over.  They were absolutely beautiful.  Botany and art have always had a strong relationship, and many botanical artists help, to this day, in correct classification and historical documentation of plant discoveries.

Her work is still under copyright so I cannot show you the images directly from this site.  Please click on the following link to see a wonderful gallery of her work.  I actually saw a few of these prints in person.  Notice the wonderful detail of morphology, highlighting the structure and life cycles of plants.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a botanical illustration can show a more detailed picture of plant structure and development than a photograph (check the venus flytrap one..it's fantastic).

Barbara Everard Gallery

Barbara Mary Steyning Everard:  (27 July 1910 - 17 June 1990) A botanical illustrator who's work included everything from greeting cards to botanical publications and gardening magazines.  In 1936 she actually worked at a fake antique business in Soho, London.  She made fake Chinese wallpapers.  Forgery at its finest.  She was initially paid very little but soon rose to a senior position and was commissioned to work at Fortnum and Masons for murals and decorated teatables for the Dominion Theatre (wonder if some of her work is still there...hmmm).  While working on the job she took night classes at the Ealing School of Art while she further honed her amazing talent.  Her son told me that the white spaces in her works are just the paper background.  Seeing some of them up close, it confounded me how I would even begin to attempt something of that level of detail and think of some elements as a negative.

During the Great Depression she actually worked as a lady's companion (I had no idea such a thing existed...it's fascinating and you should check it out).  She married her husband Raymond Wallace Everard in secret and lived apart from him for a time because he was stationed to work in Singapore and his employers did not know of his marriage.  With the outbreak of war in Europe they decided to have a child, Martin.  In February of 1942 Singapore fell to the Japanese and Raymond was taken prisoner while Barbara and Martin escaped on the last boat to evade the Japanese.  Raymond spent three years as a prisoner but was eventually freed and even came back to Malaya to help develop rubber plantations for Dunlop.  Barbara and Martin joined him in 1946 and she began to paint large watercolour still lifes and display them in Singapore, Malacca, and Juala Lumpur.

She and Raymond returned to England in 1952 where she embarked on a 30 year journey of botanical illustration.  She drew many amazing works of orchids, wild flowers of Britain, and many paintings of endangered species, including the Rafflesia (the worlds largest single flower) on Mt Kinabalu.  Some 250 plates and sketches can be found in the Library and Archive at Royal Botanic Garden Kew.  Sadly I was unable to get a look at these at my brief visit to Kew.  Perhaps another trip.  If you would like to see the Rafflesia illustration.  Another gallery can be found here as well as merchandise.  She also has an autobiography titled Call Them the Happy Years

The Barbara Everard Gallery

Some of work can be found in:
Wild Flowers of the World by Brian D Morley (I saw many originals from this)
Trees and Bushes of Europe by Oleg Polunin
Flowers of Europe by Oleg Polunin
Flowers of the Mediterranean by Oleg Polunin

I'm humbled and touched that the randomness of the world but me in touch with someone so amazing and afforded me the opportunity to visit with her son (a very gracious host) and view the art and talent that her hands and heart created.

An remarkable woman with a remarkable story.

Thanks Barbara.