FLORA INDICA: RECOVERING LOST STORIES FROM KEW’S INDIAN DRAWINGS
Book ID/图书代码： 07496025C00080
English Summary/英文概要： For the first time, Kew’s recovered collections of Indian botanical art are brought together with the remarkable stories of the artists who painted them, the colonial context in which they were made, and their essential role in the development of botanical knowledge.
Featuring a representative selection of one hundred artworks from the previously fractured, uncatalogued, and largely inaccessible collection of over seven thousand Indian illustrations in Kew’s archives, Flora Indica foregrounds the vital role of Indian artists in helping to advance both scientific knowledge and the aesthetics of botanical art.
The botanical watercolors, created between 1790 and 1850, were commissioned by British botanists, many of whom were employed by the East India Company to document India’s rich plant diversity. The text by leading expert Henry Noltie reveals the lost stories of how these illustrations came to be, exploring the work of twenty Indian artists from eleven collections, with nineteen named individuals and thirty previously unseen illustrations. Noltie’s extensive research into these hidden histories features plants native to South Asia alongside exotics introduced from the then-emerging international network of botanical gardens, taking readers on a journey that explores the environments in which these master artists worked. The style of the works represents a unique fusion of traditional Indian artistry and techniques with botanists’ demands for naturalism and scientific specificity from an Indo-British perspective.
Presented with a foreword by art historian William Dalrymple, Flora Indica illuminates Kew’s beautiful Indian botanical art collection, through which readers are invited to discover the important lost histories of Indian botanical art from the age of empire.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 英国邱园首次将印度植物艺术的珍贵藏品与艺术家的传奇故事、创作时的殖民背景，以及这些艺术作品在植物学知识发展中的重要作用相结合。《印度植物志》精选了邱园档案馆中七千余幅印度插图的代表性作品，这些插图曾因分散存放、未编目且难以获取而遭遗失。该展览通过这一精选系列，凸显了印度艺术家在推动科学认知与植物艺术美学发展方面的重要贡献。
这些植物水彩画创作于1790至1850年间，由英国植物学家委托绘制——其中许多人受雇于东印度公司，负责记录印度丰富的植物多样性。权威专家亨利·诺尔蒂撰写的文字揭示了这些插图的创作秘辛，通过十一个收藏中的二十位印度艺术家作品，探索十九位具名人物与三十幅从未公开的插图。诺尔蒂对这些隐秘历史的深入研究，不仅呈现了南亚本土植物，还收录了当时新兴国际植物园网络引入的异域物种，带领读者走进这些艺术大师的创作环境。作品风格融合了传统印度艺术技法与植物学家对自然主义及科学精确性的要求，体现了英印文化视角下的独特艺术融合。
《印度植物志》由艺术史学家威廉·达尔林普尔作序，通过展示邱园精美的印度植物艺术藏品，带领读者探寻帝国时代印度植物艺术的重要失落历史。(Sandy)
Awards/获奖情况：
About the Author/作者介绍： 亨利·诺尔蒂曾任职于爱丁堡皇家植物园，担任分类学家、馆长及印度植物标本历史学家。他专精于研究印度艺术家为苏格兰东印度公司外科医生绘制的植物图谱，并在植物园因弗利斯厅画廊策划了一系列专题展览。他撰写了大量图文并茂的专著，这些著作分别受孟买总督辖区的亚历山大·吉布森、马德拉斯总督辖区的罗伯特·怀特和休·克莱霍恩委托完成。目前，他担任爱丁堡皇家植物园与伦敦自然历史博物馆的研究员。
普拉布达·达斯古普塔是位自学成才的摄影师，著有《女性与拉达克》。他于1991年获得伊夫·圣罗兰摄影基金资助，作品被多家机构收藏，包括肯·达米博物馆和卡拉·索扎尼画廊。威廉·达尔林普尔常年往返于伦敦与德里两地。其代表作包括《在香奈都》《精灵之城》（该书荣获1994年托马斯·库克旅游图书奖及《星期日泰晤士报》年度英国青年作家奖）、《卡利时代》以及《最后的莫卧儿王朝》。
Henry Noltie worked at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh as a taxonomist, curator, and historian of its Indian collections. He specialized in the botanical drawings made by Indian artists for Scottish East India Company surgeons, on which he curated a series of exhibitions in the Garden’s Inverleith House gallery. He has written lavishly illustrated monographs on the collections commissioned by Alexander Gibson in the Bombay Presidency and by Robert Wight and Hugh Cleghorn in the Madras Presidency. He is a research associate of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Natural History Museum, London.
Prabuddha Dasgupta is a self-taught photographer and the author of Women and Ladakh. He received the Yves Saint Laurent grant for photography in 1991, and his work is in the collections of many institutions, including Museo Ken Damy and Galleria Carla Sozzani. William Dalrymple divides his time between London and Delhi. His other books include In Xanadu, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, The Age of Kali, and The Last Mughal.
Format:
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：
原文第一章内容：暂无
手稿：暂无
大纲：暂无