Crown Imperial With a Yellow Flower

Dame Ann Hamilton (née Heathcote) created her collection of 162 drawings of plants with water- and bodycolor over pencil on vellum. She personally identified all but two of the plants she recreated, including by Latin names. Suggestive of Georg Ehret’s influence, Hamilton’s style included a light backdrop inscribed with the plant name below. Of the 162 paintings nine are dated on the back.

Ehret, Europe’s foremost botanical illustrator of the mid-eighteenth century, traveled from Germany to England in 1735 and spent time teaching and drawing in the country’s royal and private botanical gardens. Given the status of Hamilton’s family, and the social circles she inhabited, it is likely that she studied alongside her sister, Bridget, one of Ehret’s star pupils and his last known student.

Recognized by their whorl of bell-shaped flowers with a tuft of crumpled leaves above and a distinctive scent, crown imperials were a popular exotic flowers in the eighteenth century. Native to modern-day Turkey and Iran, the Fritillaria imperialis attracted the attention of many European artists of this era who had just been introduced to the species. Hamilton paints the flower with a light from within. She includes a broken leaf, an imperfection that suggests that Hamilton drew her specimens from life.