Botany was a very popular hobby in Victorian times, considered particularly appropriate for girls and women, who collected, pressed and drew their specimens. The rich "language of flowers" gave extra meaning to the pursuit. Mechanics' Institutes, and other local societies which aimed to educate working people and spread scientific knowledge, encouraged the pursuit for men too. With the encouragement of garden designers like Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson, and their best-selling publications, horticulture became fashionable as well, not only in great estates but in the burgeoning suburbs, where roses around the porch spoke of the rural past. For the more adventurous, travelling to other climes and living abroad brought exposure to the unfamiliar and exotic plant life of other countries, and an opportunity to present their findings to those at home through the ever-improving technology of illustrations.

For artists in the age of Pre-Raphaelistism, and then Aestheticism, the details, colours and symbolic meanings of plant life were a splendid resource. Particular flowers' relevance to the season, not to mention their more purely decorative effects, could add immeasurably to a composition. Some who liked to include them in their artwork were inspired by the Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, and painted flowers as part of their still-life compositions. The stylised delicacy of Japanese art offered its own possibilities for flower painting, as did another fashionable trend — impressionism, with its very different potential to convey the vibrancy, the delicate and infinite variations, and the indefinable aura of flowers. Here, for the artistic eye, and for the delight of all art-lovers, were riches indeed. — Jacqueline Banerjee


Victorian
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17 August 2025