Flower power

Worth a Thousand Words

The ancient art of botanical illustration is a delicate marriage between science and art. The finest examples combine an accurate representation of a specimen with an artist’s eye for beauty. 
 
This summer, you can discover some of the best contemporary examples when Worth a Thousand Words comes to the RHS Lindley Library in London.
 
Worth a Thousand Words, RHS Lindley Library, London, Mon-Fri, until 17 August.

The Enchanted Garden

We adore this exhibition at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery, which charts the arts’ relationship with gardens from Pre-Raphaelites and French Impressionists to the Bloomsbury Group and 20th-century abstraction.

You’ll find works from Claude Monet and Lucien Pissarro to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beatrix Potter, Vanessa Bell and Francis Bacon among many more.

The Enchanted Garden, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Until 7 October.

Your Sweetest Empire is to Please

The National Trust’s Gibside in Tyne and Wear is celebrating the beguiling, troubled existence of its former owner, Countess Mary Eleanor Bowes, through contemporary art.
In the late 18th century, she became the richest heiress in Britain, winning acclaim as a botanist. Her achievements in the field, though, are often eclipsed by personal turbulence – she became known as the 'Unhappy Countess' after a disastrous, abusive marriage.
 
At Gibside, contemporary artist Fiona Curran has brought Mary Eleanor’s love of botany to the fore and created a four-metre architectural folly, housing a series of brightly coloured exotic plants.
 
Your Sweetest Empire is to Please, Contemporary Art at Gibside, Gibside, Tyne and Wear, Until 30 September.

Images: Claude Monet. Water-Lilies, Setting Sun © The National Gallery, London. Bequeathed by Simon Sainsbury, 2006; Arisaema specoisom var. mirable 2013-2015, courtesy Rosalind Franklin and RHS Lindley Collections; Your sweetest empire is to please, artwork by Fiona Curran, photo by Colin Davison