Abstract

Botanical illustration and flower painting are regularly designated as separate genres, one scientific, theother art historical, distinctions that are challenged here as problematic given that the art forms shareand interrelate in ways that have not been sufficiently considered. As a form of scientific representation,botanical illustration assists in plant classification, conservation and exploitation, and has avoided critiquedue to its protection within the privileged discipline of science. [1] However, botanical illustration has along genealogy that participated in developing cultural concepts of aesthetics, religion, and society longbefore Linnaean classificatory systems brought about a proliferation of plant illustration in the eighteenthcentury. [2] Botanical illustration became a tool recording imperialist endeavours to tame and utilisenature through processes of documentation and collection, and was intimately associated with medical,social, economic and racial practices during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Botanicalillustration cannot exist in scientific isolation outside of its historical connections, since even the mostbasic depiction exists within a broad socio-cultural perspective