Discover the exchange of botanical knowledge which was shared between Canton (now Guangzhou) and London in the 1770s in a new exhibition, displaying a collection of Chinese botanical art and research for the first time in Britain since it was commissioned 235 years ago.
This will be the first exhibition to reveal the relationship between John Bradby Blake (1745-1773), a botanist who worked as supercargo for the East India Company in the 1770s, his Chinese interlocutor Whang At Tong 黃遏東, and the botanical artists he commissioned to document plants native to Canton.
The exhibition will feature 30 botanical paintings together with herbals, maps, models, a portrait of Whang At Tong 黃遏東 by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), and watercolours and drawings of Canton from the V&A, telling the story of a little-known international botanical collaboration.
Bradby Blake worked in Canton in the late 1760s until his death in 1773, during which time he commissioned more than 150 botanical paintings of Chinese plants, the makings of an unfinished ‘Compleat Chinensis’. In his garden in Canton, he grew local plants such as Camellia japonica, Kumquat (Citrus japonica), and tangerines from seeds and cuttings, documenting and recording information about seed germination and growing conditions, sending seeds and plants to England. The exhibition will bring together Bradby Blake’s archive of Chinese herbals and research material, to be reunited the botanical paintings they inspired for the first time in 235 years.
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia, where Bradby Blake’s archive is now held.
Free
Free
