A Special Invite from the Curators at Kew - Reinhild Raistrick.

The Curators at Kew very kindly invited Reinhild and her family for a special visit to the exhibition. Here is Reinhild's recounting of the day.

The exhibition visit with my family was just wonderful. We spent the whole morning with the curators in the library. We had the exhibition to ourselves. They had carefully selected ‘Old Master’ engravings from the 1650’s and orchid herbarium specimen, to display alongside some of my paintings.

They had put out all my 27 African Violet paintings for us to see again. They had acquired them for their permanent collection 18 years ago. These were part of my African Rainforest series.

The Librarians had kindly put together an exhibition showing orchid engraving by ‘old master painters’ together with orchid specimen from the Herbarium and a few of my recent orchid paintings from Holy Island.

Herbarium specimen of dactylorhiza from Holy Island collected in 1963.

Specimen of dactylorhiza in a spirit jar collected in 1988Picture 4Hand painted engraving showing moth with Dactylorhiza by John Curtis in 1824

It was memorable, and lovely to share the day with my children.