This is an article that Maryann Roper ask to be shared with the group.  

STELLA ROSS-CRAIG was one of the foremost British botanical illustrators of the 20th century. She died in 2006, just shy of her 100th birthday.

Her major contribution to the worlds of both art and botany was her series Drawings of British Plants, first published in 1948 and completed in 1973. The series eventually included 31 installments, and contained over 1300 plates. She drew both from life and from herbarium specimens at Kew Gardens. A quote from Ross-Craig admits that doing ‘all those little hairs and things’ gave her the shudders. She worked to complete two drawings per week.

In addition to her pen-and-ink works, she produced watercolors of over 3,000 species of plants,  contributing over 300 of her works to Curtis’ Botanical Magazine, the journal of the Royal Horticultural Society.

She also illustrated The Flora of Tropical East Africa (1961) and painted a series of sixty orchid portraits.

Ms. Ross-Craig never sought publicity: “I didn’t want to sell them.  I just wanted them to be done as records.”   Although her work was greatly admired in the botanical art world, it was not until 2001 that a public exhibition of her work was organized.

In 1999, she became the sixth person to receive the Kew International Medal.

In 1999, she became the sixth person to receive the Kew International Medal.

(See additional images, below.)

(All information and images are found in various entries on the internet.)