Vinca minor. Drawn in the garden of the Watts Gallery, near Compton, Surrey, England, which is also the garden of a friend: Wilfrid Blunt. Wilfrid, who is famous for his History of Botanical Illustration and a score of other books, is the very amiable curator of the Watts Gallery. George Watts (the noted English painter and sculptor) married the teenaged Ellen Terry (the noted English actress) in 1864, but the marriage lasted only a year. Watts’s second wife was the founder of the still extant Watts Gallery, where one may see a good collection of his colorful and romantic nineteenth-century oils.
Surrey always seems lush and green to me, and to enjoy the warmth and candor of the curator’s repartee is a special treat. Wilfrid Blunt is one of those rare people who can be utterly caustic and totally charming in the same moment. He is a man whose wit always triumphs over the painful truth. Tall, big boned, and with a contagious sly smile, he has devoted a long life to the best of causes: teaching, writing, music, art, and (not the least of these) flower pictures. What is there about England that brings forth so many creative and wonderful people? —Henry Evans
192 copies were printed and sell for $300 each.