A personal tribute by Claire Clark for Susan Worthington who passed away in February 2022

Ten years ago Susan Worthingtons botanical painting of the orchid Cymbidium Summer Splash was so exquisitely beautiful that it took my breath away. Just as beautiful is Susans painting of Rhododendron superbum when it bloomed at Pukeiti Gardens, Taranaki.

I have loved the works of all botanical artists since first meeting Nancy Adams at the National Museum in the 1980s and then Nancy Tichborne, Sue Wickison and Susan Worthington, who were our guest artists at Diamond Jubilee Splash in 2012. Each artist had had a brush with royalty and it was a glamorous evening at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts when the Governor-General opened the exhibition. During our conversations, Susan drew me into her wondrous world of florilegia - their purpose, the artists, the books published by Addison Publications, and her insights into HRH The Prince of Wales love of watercolours and gardening.

In 2009 Susan had afternoon tea with HRH at Highgrove and presented her artworks for The Highgrove Florilegium. When the Financial Times (2011) wrote, Something as special as The Highgrove Florilegium should surely come along just once or twice in every lifetime - for Susan, the opportunity did come twice - with The Transylvania Florilegium. These artworks mark Susans standing as an internationally recognised botanical artist.

The early years

Susan Worthington was a Taranaki girl, born in Stratford in 1944. Both her mother and grandmother were gardeners, and Susan sketched and painted from a young age. She had her first art lesson aged 12 but was a mature student when she enrolled for formal art training. In 1987 she graduated with Distinction from Whitecliffe Art School, and in 1992 graduated with a BA in English and Art History at the University of Auckland and a Diploma in Teaching at Auckland Teachers College. She had a career teaching adult art programmes.

Graham Smith, past Director of Pukeiti Gardens writes that Susan loved Pukeiti. About 1979 we had flowered Rhododendron protistum for the very first time, after about 24 years from seed sowing, and we made a fuss in the local Daily News to bring people up to see it. That is when Susan and I first got to discuss painting the special rhododendrons of Pukeiti. Everything Susan did after that was the result of her becoming artist in residence for many years during the spring, staying at the old Pukeiti Lodge, where she painted on the big board table. She always insisted that visitors should be welcome to watch and ask questions often resulting in the work being delayed well into the evening!

Susan stayed at Pukeiti Lodge for several weeks at a time in order to be able to work 10-12 hour days. Her Rhododendron portfolio built up from there and each year I would find new species flowering for the first time to put in front of her. Often overwhelmed by these she would sketch and do colour swatches on the edge of the paper to come back later to finish them. It did not take long to build up more than 50 works and it was then that the idea of a book of the Pukeiti Rhododendrons materialised, developing later into an international publication THE PUKEITI LARGE-LEAF RHODODENDRONS The Watercolour Drawings of Susan Worthington. During Grahams visits to Susans home in Waikanae, he catalogued her collection of about 200 botanical artworks. Graham felt privileged to have worked alongside Susan and reminisced that the best times were when he produced something out of the box, such as first-time flowerings, and he could see Susans reactions! In the field he would take photographs, measurements and use colour swatches to get details of plants for her. They would discuss plant form and colour. Susan used colour to give depth to her paintings. She talked of a rhododendron as a being shaped like a ball with its colour a lot darker on the right hand side (see Rhododendron Purple Splendour) and its true colour in the middle of the plant.

Botanical Illustration studies

Botanical illustration became Susans passion. In a Radio New Zealand interview (2012) she described what was involved. Everything has to be measured; be precise; count the number of stamens; know what is happening with the end of the stem; know where this years growth starts and last years finishes; know the underside of the leaf and you have to work with dying models. She saw the role of the artist to then compose the drawing to give the plant the wow factor on paper. As there were no botanical illustration courses in New Zealand Susan enrolled at English institutions. Her flights were a modest cost as her son was now a pilot for Cathay Pacific and her partner Max Kempson purchased a house-boat near the Thames for their home base in London.

In 2001 she studied at West Dean College, in 2002 at Kew Gardens and in 2006 at the English Gardening School located in the Chelsea Physic Garden where she was awarded a Diploma in Botanical Painting with Distinction. She painted five Rhododendrons for her portfolio.

Meanwhile, she was receiving international recognition as a botanical artist. In 2003 she was selected to exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Society Show in London and awarded a Silver Medal for her paintings of New Zealand native plants from Pukeiti. Her painting of Cyathea smithii was purchased by Dr Shirley Sherwood for her collection. In 2004 New Zealand Post issued stamps and a First Day Cover featuring Susans series of New Zealand-bred garden flowers. The stamps included Taranaki connections of Rhododendron Charisma from Pukeiti and Magnolia Vulcan bred by Felix Jury at Tikorangi. Dr Sherwood selected Susans Cyathea smithii for the 2005 exhibition A New Flowering, 1000 Years of Botanical Art held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and for the 2008 exhibition Down Under Botanical Artists from Australia and New Zealand held at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery located in Kew Gardens, London. Susan won three more silver medals for botanical illustration at the BBC Garden World Shows held in Birmingham in 2005, 2008 and 2009.

Susan now had a large portfolio of botanical art with a focus on Taranaki plants. She held a solo show of 50 artworks at Puke Ariki in 2007 titled A Passion for Plants Botanical Paintings by Susan Worthington. In 2009 Worthingtons Plant Portraits exhibition was held at Tupare. In 2019 Susan selected 10 paintings for the exhibition Pukeiti - The living Museum and was artist in residence at Pukeiti. Susan continued to enjoy teaching and conducted workshops for the Botanical Art Society of New Zealand and Watercolour New Zealand. In her last email to me in January Susan was highlighting an area of difficulty that I should think about. She said, I am including photographs of white flowers as they are the hardest to paint on white paper without them looking dirty.

The Highgrove Florilegium

Susan described a florilegium as a collection of flower paintings that record plants in a given period of time or place. It is like a historical time capsule and may record hybrid plants, which if they go out of fashion, can be lost. The Highgrove Florilegium project was created to celebrate the 60th birthday in 2008 of HRH The Prince of Wales. It became a seven year project involving 72 botanical artists from all over the world producing 124 paintings of the plants and trees growing in his garden at Highgrove in Gloucestershire. The projects panel of experts included representatives of the Chelsea Physic Garden who had seen Susans 2006 Rhododendron portfolio and viewed her as a rhododendron expert. In 2007 she was back in New Zealand when she received a request to paint Rhododendron Purple Splendour which had been one of the Queen Mothers favourites. It was still in flower at Pukeiti and she completed the painting. The panel deemed it a most beautiful, sensitive and refined painting and asked her to paint Rhododendron Scarlet Wonder. She replied that they would have to wait until the end of the year as it was no longer in flower. When asked for a third painting she selected Aesculus hippocastanum, the English horse chestnut as she already had preparatory drawings. Susan, the only New Zealand artist selected for the project, was honoured in 2010 when the Taranaki Electrical Trust gifted The Highgrove Florilegium to the people of Taranaki. The two volume book set is in the Puke Ariki collection in New Plymouth.

The Pukeiti large-leaf rhododendrons

In 2014 twenty-three of Susans superb portfolio of large-leaf Rhododendron paintings were e-published internationally in THE PUKEITI LARGE-LEAF RHODODENDRONS The Watercolour Drawings of Susan Worthington by Addison Publications, London in association with The Pukeiti Rhododendron Trust Inc. New Zealand. Susan said that the paintings were produced in 2011 when she was snowed in at Pukeiti Lodge during one of Taranakis coldest winters. Some of the species flowered for the first time and she had only hours to record their details before they spoiled in the heat of the lodge. The laundry became her cool room to store blooms.

Honour

Susans contribution to art was recognised in 2013 when she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services in New Zealand as a botanical artist.

The Transylvania Florilegium

Susans next international project was an invitation to work on The Transylvania Florilegium, created by the Prince of Wales Foundation Romania. When HRH first visited Transylvania over 20 years ago he fell in love with this unspoiled area of Romania which is one of Europes last medieval landscapes of meadows covered in indigenous wild-flowers. Lady Pearson, of Addison Publications, wrote that When he suggested the project His Royal Highness said that the artists would need to visit. There is no other way to paint these wild-flowers. We arranged for a group of eight artists to visit Transylvania each year for five years. Susan was there in May/June 2015. The artists stayed in the Princes properties which include guest houses. In the group photo botanist John Akeroyd is in the back row and Susan is seated far right. Susan contributed two paintings including the Caucasian daisy Tanacetum corymbosum. Her botanical paintings will continue to be exhibited worldwide in exhibitions of The Highgrove and The Transylvania Florilegia.

Sources: Susan Worthington, Claire Clark, Graham Smith, Lady Pearson, Pat Greenfield, Radio New Zealand Archives, Botanical Art Society of New Zealand, Space Studio & Gallery, and Watercolour New Zealand Archives.

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