Arthur Harry Church

by D. J. Mabberley

The revolutionary drawings of Arthur Harry Church (1865-1937) are considered some of the finest botanical illustrations of the twentieth century. His mastery of microtechnique lends a startling clarity and razor-sharp edge to the many cross-sections and diagrams of flowers that he produced to accompany his elegant studies. Immured in the Botanical Gardens at Oxford, he was, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the most knowledgeable yet least travelled botanist in Britain. An academic recluse, Church considered flowers to be machines for ensuring successful sexual reproduction in plants. His clinical attitude belies the freshness and boldness of his spectacular illustrations of their internal structures. His technique and style were in advance of his time, while the brilliant eroticism and apparent modernity of his art bear comparison with the work of Georgia O'Keefe.