Christobel Mattingley

I've been looking for this book for ages but it was a bit expensive to buy new. Then found a great copy at the local market for $10. Bargain! It's a lovely book with truly lovely botanical illustrations. It seems to have been written for an exhibition held in the National Library of Australia and has a nice biographical article about Adam Forster. Actually, his real name was Carl Ludwig August Wiarda and he was German. But changed his name....understandably during the anti German attitudes of the first world war.....and adopting the name of a German English naturalist painter. Forster himself seems to have been quite a formidable character...emigrating first to South Africa (marrying there and having three children) thence to Australia to "establish himself". It took over 8 years before he was reunited with wife and children. Most of his career was spent as Registrar of the Pharmaceutical Board.
But, on the side he was a significant botanical painter ....in fact he did most ...if not all of the illustrations for the book Wild Flowers of Australia published in 1938 for the first time. At the time of his death (in 1928) Forster had painted 928 paintings of Australian wildflowers. They are lovely works and nicely reproduced in this book.....though it's a mini book and I would have liked to see a larger format. In a few cases there are enlargements of the individual works so one can see the brushwork and drawing more readily. One advantage (for the artist) of the small size is that the paintings look even more wizardly at the reduced scale....and any defects are minimised.
There are a nice selection of plants and flowers....most of them from around the Sydney region..and I recognise most of them. He has also painted a few of insects including all the cicadas that i remember from my youth: Double drummers, Greengrocers, Yellow Mondays. ......and lovely work. I know my friends with whom I meet for botanical painting sessions will be entranced by his work. Maybe, it's a bit more free-flowing and less detailed that some of theirs but the local subject matter will be familiar to all...and I know some of our group have painted the same species so will be really interested in how Adam Forster painted them.
No hesitation in awarding this book five stars.… (mais)