About this artwork
In this painting, the artist used watercolours to capture the delicacy of the irises, as well as their vivid colour. A lifelong lover of flowers, Blackadder kept a collection of local flowers as a child, each pressed and labelled with their Latin names. Here, she depicts the irises from different angles with the precision of a botanical illustrator. Yet despite her painstaking attention to detail, the flowers look graceful and full of life. Irises were a favourite flower of the artist, and in 1979 she began keeping a sketchbook to document each variety as it appeared in her garden. Around this time, Blackadder was also a frequent visitor to Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens, where she helped to run a course in botanical illustration, which gave her access to rare and exotic plants.
Updated 2021
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artist:Elizabeth Blackadder (1931 - 2021) Scottish
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title:Iris Oncocyclus
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date created:1996
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materials:Watercolour and pencil on paper
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measurements:56.70 x 57.00 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Bequeathed by Miss Michelle Proud 2002
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accession number:GMA 4685
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gallery:
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subject:
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artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Elizabeth Blackadder
Elizabeth Blackadder
Painter and printmaker Elizabeth Blackadder was born in Falkirk. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art under William Gillies, and lectured at the college from 1962 until her retirement in 1986. In 1956 she married fellow artist John Houston. Blackadder was well known for her delicate paintings of...