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The superb botanical illustration collection of Amgueddfa Cymru– National Museum Wales in Cardiff, Wales, has developed through bequests, donations, and selective purchases. Numbering more than 7,000 works, 15% of these are by women, including the work of well-known Victorian artists and leading contemporary artists such as Gillian Griffiths, Pauline Dean, and Dale Evans. In particular, the Cymmrodorion Collection is the most prestigious collection, containing illustrations dating from the 18th century and featuring works by Elizabeth Blackwell, Jane Loudon, and Sarah Drake. Using this and other collections from the museum, this article examines the contribution that women artists have made to the field of botanical illustration by referring to the lives of these women and considering their motives, whether they pursued botanical illustration out of financial necessity, out of scientific curiosity, or to allay boredom. The article further examines the social restrictions and prejudice that many of these women had to overcome.

Edmund Tyrell Artis is best known as an archaeologist who during the early nineteenth century made extensive excavations of Roman sites in the Nene Valley in Northamptonshire. However, his approach to archaeology had evolved from his earlier experiences collecting Carboniferous plant fossils. Between about 1816 and 1821, he amassed a major collection of plant fossils from the Yorkshire Coalfield and this formed the basis of a book entitled Antediluvian Phytology. This book was a landmark in British palaeobotany but was his only contribution to the subject. This was partly because of his growing archaeological interests and partly because of disagreements with William Buckland, one of the most influential geologists then in Britain.

The Endeavour voyage was the first expedition from Britain to carry professional botanists and natural history artists. The main purpose was to observe the Transit of Venus. However, Cook had secret orders to explore and map the elusive southern continent. Joseph Banks, a wealthy naturalist, was consumed with excitement at the prospect of undiscovered plants, animals, and people. He arranged for a party of naturalists to accompany the expedition. Banks employed three artists: Parkinson; Buchan; and Spöring. Daniel Solander was his scientific partner. Contemporary diaries reveal how these men, from different backgrounds and nations, worked together to compile 3,000 specimens and over 1,300 drawings. Banks intended to publish the drawings quickly, but publication was delayed. When Solander died, the publication lost momentum and Banks was preoccupied by other projects. Banks’ Florilegium was finally published over 200 years later, a lasting legacy of the talents, dedication, and bravery of the artists.

In the final years of his life, after a long and turbulent political career, John Stuart, third Earl of Bute, was at last free to indulge in one of his passions: botany. The publication of Linnaeus's Systema naturae in 1735 threw the botanical world into disarray and academic argument raged throughout Europe. The production of the Botanical tables (1785) was an ambitious project to explain Bute's individual view of Linnaeus's system of taxonomy and was particularly composed for the “Fair Sex”. Twelve volumes were published privately and presented to family, royalty and botanical colleagues across Europe. The Botanical tables were illustrated by the renowned botanical artist, John Miller. The illustrations are both aesthetically pleasing and scientifically correct. In this paper we consider the circumstances of the production of the Botanical tables and explore how the original sets of this publication and original material have been dispersed.