The spring exhibition featured a series of exquisite watercolor drawings of native California plants by the early 20th century “Arts and Crafts Period” artist, Albert Valentien. The exhibition, Plant Portraits: The California Legacy of A.R. Valentien, drew from the collection of the San Diego Natural History Museum, and was circulated under the auspices of the Irvine Museum.

Exquisite watercolors of California wildflowers and other native plants, produced by Albert R. Valentien between 1908 and 1918, were the subject of the spring exhibition at the Wildling Art Museum. These watercolors, owned by the San Diego Natural History Museum, were among over 1,094 sheets depicting 1,500 native species that Valentien created on commission from Ellen Browning Scripps. Conserved and framed, they are now being circulated under the auspices of the Irvine Museum, which has published a selection of the watercolors in a book with the same title as the exhibition: Plant Portraits: the California Legacy of A. R. Valentien.

The exhibition was open to the public from April 12 through June 11. Because of space constraints, the eighty watercolors in the exhibition were shown in rotation. The watercolors of wildflowers, grasses, and ferns were shown from April 12-30; more wildflowers, cacti, and shrubs were shown May 3-21; and a mixture of plants, shrubs, and trees were shown May 24-June 11. Visitors were encouraged to return to the Museum to see all three sections.

Valentien was born in 1862 in Cincinnati and was employed as a youth at the Rookwood Pottery in that city, where he became the head decorator, staying 24 years. It was there that he met his future wife, Anna Marie Bookprinter. After marriage and a trip abroad, the couple, who had heard about the natural beauty of California, left Rockwood Pottery and moved to San Diego to be near Anna’s brother. It was there that Mr. Valentien met the philanthropist, Ellen Browning Scripps, who was interested in natural history and commissioned him to take on the monumental task of painting all the wildflowers and plants of California. For the next ten years, from 1908 to 1918, Valentien traveled all over the State, from the Mexican border to the northern California coast, selecting plant specimens and painting them in delicate watercolor on a toned ground. Although he had initially focused on the wildflowers, he enlarged his scope to include tress, grasses, and ferns as well. His exquisite paintings were botanically accurate and meticulous in their execution, yet breathtakingly vibrant and full of spontaneity.

Valentien had expected that his work would be published upon completion, but Miss Scripps decided that publication would be too costly, and the project was abandoned, much to the artist’s disappointment. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1925. Eventually, his original watercolors were bequeathed by the Scripps family to the San Diego Natural History Museum where they have been restored and catalogued, and it is from this corpus that the Spring exhibition, Plant Portraits: The California Legacy of A. R. Valentien, was drawn.