Illustration by Indian artist Vishnuprasad

Correct identification of the plants were essential for medicinal and commercial purposes and thousands of illustrations of Indian plants done from life by Indian artists are scattered throughout the British documents on Indian Botany. India has had long traditions of using images of plants to evoke moods and seasons in Indian miniature paintings. The illustrations done by Indian artists in the British-India botanical works combine the sensitive illustration traditions of Indian art with accurate descriptive scientific details of European scientific illustration tradition, and “are masterpieces of the genre,” according to the art historian Stuart Cary Welch (A Confluence of East and West, of Art and Science, in the late 18th and Early 19th Century Indian Botanical Paintings, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation 1980, p 8-19). Vishnuprasad was one of the many highly skilled Indian artists in the employ of the Calcutta Botanical Garden whose name has come down to posterity along with his illustrations.