Since settling in Ireland 50 years ago, Wendy Walsh's intense and precisely observed watercolours have ensured her place in a great tradition of botanical painting. But before that she had already lived a full and varied life, one whose rigours have enriched her work, writes Eileen Battersby
EACH PAINTING IS more beautiful, if possible, than the one that went before it. Nothing, not even an intense study of all her work as reproduced in her many publications, could prepare the viewer for the subtle magnificence of the originals in the botanical art of Wendy Walsh.
Sitting in the silence of the library- herbarium building at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin, the sharp winter light shifting over the remaining orangey-yellow leaves of a majestic Zelkova tree, the immaculate sleeping beds visible from the windows and, in the background, the curved dome of the famous Great Palm House, is an ideal place to experience the works which are stored there. One by one, all 96 of the original watercolour plates of Walsh's An Irish Florilegium, mounted on a backing paper and well protected in clear plastic slip covers, are placed on the desk. Perhaps it sounds theatrical, yet the viewer can merely gasp at the overwhelming perfection; every thorn, every hair, each shading of colour is exact, alive on the page. Beneath each watercolour is the date and details of the plant's location.
Every flower painted by Walsh emerges with its form and colour true to nature, its beauty, personality and dignity accurately evoked by her unfailing eye for detail. This gentle, self-taught English woman, who settled in Ireland 50 years ago, is a major international talent; one of the finest living exponents of a sublime tradition, botanical painting, the scientific record of plants dating back to Dürer and subsequent specialists such as the great Georg Ehret and Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840). This is not flower painting. Walsh's work is as sophisticated and as individual as Audubon's bird studies. The material in the library tells the story of a unique collaboration between Walsh and taxonomist Dr Charles Nelson. Many of their projects originated at the Botanic Gardens, and some of the subjects were painted there. Together the scientist and the artist have chronicled the story of Ireland's flora, from the wildflower glories of the Burren to the trees of Ireland, while An Irish Florilegium, volumes I (1983) and II (1988), offer a spectacular testament to the range of Ireland's wild and garden flowers.
Botanical art is highly specialised; it goes far beyond making beautiful images, it facilitates science. It demands scientific exactitude; it is about looking closely at the subject and replicating the facts. It is precise, and also truthful. There is a musicality, there is movement. The viewer can imagine the breezes, the sunlight, the rain. It takes practice and patience, immense artistry, obvious genius and a special quality - natural curiosity. Wendy Walsh, at 93, remains curious, interested, involved. The first thing she consults in the daily newspaper is the racing results. Many things have shaped her eye: her love of the countryside, her affinity with animals, her ability to look closely and see the magic in the ordinary. She looks to the great practitioners of the past, such as Ehret (1708-1770) and Redouté, both of whom have influenced her vision and her graceful, dignified style. She has always learnt from her experiences.
She spent less than a year in Japan at the end of the second World War but struck up a friendship with an elderly artist. At that time Walsh was busy with her young children and had to make time to sketch and paint. That Japanese interlude proved important and she feels the artistic philosophy of Far Eastern botanical artists helped shape her. She explains how Oriental artists can spend a year studying a flower, "looking at a flower or leaf and then paint it from memory. They'll look at a plum or the leaves on a tree, and watch them through the seasons. Then they'll go inside and paint". According to Walsh, "They want to capture the soul of the flower, not just an image; that's why they watch it, understand it, have it in their head and see how it behaves in the wind." This philosophy is also Walsh's; she believes that a good flower painter must imagine being a flower "out in the sun and wind".
What makes an artist? It's the question that is always asked. Desire and ambition are obvious answers, but life itself is a major element, that and an ability to see, to look, and to recognise the genius in the ordinary. Walsh was always drawing, always looking. Initially it was animals, horses and dogs. Horses have always been her abiding passion. As a child she often visited the Wallace Collection in London and one of her favourite paintings was Landseer's An Arab's Tent, which depicts a prized Arab mare resting with her foal. No matter where in the world Walsh happened to be, and her dramatic travels certainly contradict what seems the settled existence of a botanical artist, horses have always been her life force.
SHE WAS BORN in Westmoreland, Cumbria on April 9th 1915, and was named Wendy after her mother's dog and Felicité after a climbing rose. Her family were comfortable; her father belonged to a merchant clan, Storeys of Lancaster. When she was five the family moved to London, where her father represented the family business. They had nine servants. Wendy and her elder sister lived a privileged existence complete with a governess and lessons in dancing, riding and sewing. It does seem like something out of a period novel, complete with being dressed like matching dolls by Mimi, her fussy, extravagant mother.
Wendy's paternal grandfather owned racehorses and had a fine collection of equestrian art that included paintings by Stubbs. Both sides of the family had colourful lives; some sense of this is captured in Wendy Walsh: A Lifetime of Painting (Strawberry Tree, 2007), a memoir which draws on her diaries and conversations shared with her grandson, Nick Wilkinson.
However, the luxury of her early childhood ended abruptly when her parents divorced. What had been a wonderful succession of trips around England, visiting the various country homes of wealthy relatives, collapsed into a grim saga of moves between rented accommodation, a couple of them haunted. Once they were evicted because of her little brother's loud crying. At 14 her education ended without her ever formally attending school. University was an impossibility, and even the chance of art school had to be declined because she had to help with her younger brother and sister. Meanwhile, her mother became increasingly depressed and helpless. For Wendy, consolation came through writing and in observing nature. Her talent for sketching animals was noticed and she was often commissioned to do portraits of beloved pets.
Although Walsh's remarkable career as a botanical artist began after she settled in Ireland in 1958, she had already lived an entire life before that, much of it dominated by wartime experiences which tested her resourcefulness. She first visited Ireland in early August 1938; her reason the Dublin Horse Show, followed by a trip to Co Kerry. That visit introduced her to the Irish countryside and the rain. For her, the rain proved a revelation as it alerted her to Ireland's abiding attraction for artists: the light, particularly the beauty of the light after rain.
In that same month of August her uncle invited her to join him and his wife, her Aunt Vera, on a trip through much of central Europe and then home through Danzig and Amsterdam. Their arrival in Salzburg coincided with Neville Chamberlain's return to Britain bearing the now ironic promise of "peace in our time". The next day, while seated in a restaurant, she watched as two SS men arrested an elderly couple. The trip ended abruptly in Budapest when the party was advised to return immediately to Britain.
The following year, 1939, she returned to Dublin for the Horse Show. But war was becoming a reality. She was posted as a volunteer to a hospital at Aldershot, a 12-mile cycle from Hall's Farm, a long-lease property, which had become home. Food shortages meant she had to have her horse, Pandora, put down. "To this day," recalls Walsh's eldest daughter, artist Lesley Fennell, "Mother says that was the hardest thing she has ever had to do in her life." It was also in Aldershot, a couple of years before the war, that she had met her future husband, John Walsh, from Longford, who was an officer in the British army.
ALL OF WENDY'S male cousins died in the war. Her future husband's father, a retired brigadier who had volunteered to serve as a king's messenger, was killed at Arras as the Germans advanced. At Easter 1941, Wendy Storey married John Walsh. Within a year he had been posted to North Africa, and Wendy returned to Hall's Farm, where her mother lived. On January 20th 1943, Lesley was born, and she was nine months old when her father saw her for the first time.
The family remained on the move, following John Walsh's regiment. Wendy's second daughter, Anna, was born in late May 1944 as England prepared for D-Day. Her husband had been sent to France and from there assigned to the US. As the war in Europe ended he was then sent to India before being posted to occupied Japan. Wendy and the children remained with Mimi at Hall's Farm.
Two years would pass before she saw her husband again. All the while, food was a priority - there was no painting. The children were often ill. Ever resourceful, Wendy bought a cow and milked her twice a day. It is the stuff of fiction. In July 1947 she and her children began the long trip to Japan, which was followed by a period in Singapore, where her son Michael was born. The next posting was to the US. After a couple of years there, the family eventually settled in Lusk when John Walsh was appointed general manager at Trinity College in 1958. He remained there until 1980. The couple set about making a wonderful garden. They moved to Kildare in 1999.
Wendy Walsh's strength of character is a wonder. Her story also reflects a time when people seemed to be better, more able, kinder. She has always looked at the world with a quiet intelligence. This modest, ladylike woman has the toughness of a lion. The no-nonsense humanity is very affecting; you begin to understand why she can see these plants and trees with such daunting clarity. She is unusual in that she paints trees as well as flowers. Her studies for Trees of Ireland(Lilliput, 1993) are superb. Unlike most botanical artists, she paints with a wet brush.
"She has spent many hours of academic study learning the technique of watercolour," says Fennell, "so that she can present a botanical subject correctly. This requires intense concentration and knowledge of both plants and paints - which I think is her great gift."
For all the valuable time she spent, from her earliest years, looking at pictures in galleries, Walsh says it is nature itself that made her draw and paint. Her daughter says: "Growing up with an artistic parent is a privilege, as from early childhood one is always being told 'look at this, isn't that interesting or beautiful or full of magic' . . . We had no television and not much money, so everything was home-made, most entertainment self-made."
Fennell works in oils and loves the way the paint can be moved and changes, "Whereas my mother's paintings are nearly always watercolour and her method of working is very precise . . . Her flowers are strictly botanical, therefore it is of primary importance to her that the subject is properly observed and faithfully represented in a scientific as well as artistic way."
Once, in a shop, I noticed a watercolour of a hare caught in intense concentration. It had the look of a Dürer and I remember thinking: "This is the way Wendy Walsh would portray a hare were she to paint one." The hare was her work. Fennell is amused, but not surprised at the anecdote. She describes the pleasure of watching her mother, at 93, showing her great-grandchildren how to hold a paintbrush.
Wendy Walsh: a Lifetime of Paintingis published by Strawberry Tree; volume I of An Irish Florilegiumhas been re-issued by Thames and Hudson. The National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, is open daily. Access to the library is by appointment only.
