Unique expo of archival botanical prints ends today

Hyderabad: The Department of Heritage Telangana presents a unique traveling exhibition of archival botanical prints from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.

Curated by Dr Henry Noltie, the 54 extraordinary prints reproduce a segment of the original 19th century drawings from the Hugh Cleghorn Collection.

Cleghorn was an East India Company botanist who served as Conservator of Forests in the Madras Presidency in the mid-1800s.

As examples of the Company School (kampani kalam) of painting, the artworks' original creators were mostly anonymous Indian artists who Dr.Henry has (through detailed research) been able to identify.

Dr Sita Reddy, a Hyderabad-based curator and editor of the Marg magazine on botanical art (insert link), who helped bring the exhibition to the city, has installed the paintings by artist: on the west wall, 25 paintings by an anonymous Marathi artist.

On the north wall, a group of 10 paintings by Murugesan Mudaliar and others from the Madras College of Art.

On the east wall, 19 paintings by Govindoo, a Telugu artist who worked in Tanjore, Tamil Nadu State.

The exhibition prints have been generously loaned to the department by DakshinaChitra Museum in Chennai.

The frames are borrowed from Goethe Zentrum, where the exhibition made its Hyderabad debut.

Botanical Art Workshops at the State Museum, Public Gardens, Hyderabad, have been underway from March 11 and would conclude on March 15.