Time Capsule Through Watercolor Flower Paintings

Saisavali Bhiromya, the Royal Consort to King Rama V, moved to reside in Suan Sunandha because it had sufficient enough area for gardening. She was genuinely interested in arboriculture. She loved planting flowers, foliage plants, and fruits making her palace abundant with ravishing flora.

“Grandmother (Saisavali Bhiromya) planted every kinds of flora. There were hundreds of roses around the palace, thousands of orchids at her orchid farm, below the orchids were anthuriums that bloomed all year long,” stated  H.H. Vimolchatra, who used to reside at Suan Sunandha in ‘The Tale of the Ladies of the Court, 1980.’ 

Saisavali Bhiromya, the Royal Consort, went to the garden every day. If she spotted any trees or flowers she liked, she’d have her lady-in-waiting paint them. Since color camera was not yet invented back then, the best way to photograph the beauty of flowers is  through painting.

Paintings only the flower focused specifically on the details of the flower with precision. The artist would start with sketching the outline then filling in with watercolor to illustrate the petals and leaves. This technique created realism and sometimes even enhanced the details of the flowers.

The artist might paint with background by filling the canvas with color which helped emphasize the features of the flowers and also create the overall mood and tone of the whole picture. The backgrounds were filled with 2 techniques: brushing and dotting.  

Paintings with composition were those wherein the artists featured other objects: vases, tablecloths, wallpaper with perspective, etc. This helped create more storytelling within the picture; a bouquet in a vase created more content than a picture of a single  flower. Painting with composition acquired more technique since it demanded the artist to excel the details of other objects and also have to unify the whole painting with dimension and perspective.

The ladies-in-waiting might not be graduated with art degrees, but by discovering the noted phrase, ‘Academy of Art,’ in paintings, we can assume the ladies were taught by artists from the academy invited to the palace. 

We can find Thai and English names of the flowers in some of the paintings, along with the dates and also the names of the artists. Thus, the paintings can be counted as a historical evidence indicating the flora planted at Suan Sunandha over a hundred years ago.

The watercolor paintings by Saisavali Bhiromya’s ladies-in-waiting are in the care of the Office of Arts and Culture, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. They are conserved and looked after with scientific techniques to prevent them deteriorate through time. The oldest paintings ever discovered were ‘Lily’ dated March 3^rd, 1917.