Arthur Harry Church

 

Floral Anatomy Cross-Section Drawings

Arthur Harry Church

c. 1905-1909

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 showed brilliant eroticism and a modernity that were well in advance of his time.