I bought a beautiful new book the other week titled, Roses a Celebration in Botanical Art, written by Rosie Sanders. Rosie does the most exquisite Botanical type paintings capturing the rose in all the different stages of its life cycle, although she does seem to favour the 'past the best' incarnation, shall we say.
This book is filled with beautiful photographs of her watercolour paintings and drawings. Some of the paintings are studies involving watercolour, charcoal and pencil while others are fully worked up specimens.
She also has some interesting facts in the front of the book on the history of roses and man's interaction with them. Did you know that fossils of roses have been found in Northern Europe, China and Japan which are up to 20 million years old. One of the earliest paintings of roses is found at Knossos on Crete. It is a fresco of a rose similar to the Wild Roses that's still grow on this island.
And here is the real Cretan rock Rose
And this is the painting.
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