Brigid EDWARDS

This very large sheet depicts one of the species of the genus of tropical flowering plants known as Heliconia, which are sometimes more commonly known as ‘lobster-claws’ or ‘toucan beaks’. Most of the nearly two hundred species of Heliconia are indigenous in the tropical Americas, but a few are found in some western Pacific islands and in Indonesia, where Brigid Edwards studied the plant depicted here. She appears to have seen the plant on the grounds of the Hotel Tjampuhan in Ubud, on the island of Bali, which was opened in 1928 as the royal guesthouse of the Ubud Palace.

In the catalogue of an exhibition of watercolours by Edwards at a London gallery, Ian Burton noted of her work that ‘The fine painting of the detail on the vellum is uncanny, but when these single objects are arranged and suspended in a contemplative space, they achieve their greatest power, and as a result of this creative act of attention, they have an almost religious intensity.’