Mee Pl. 1, Scutacaria steelii

From the rainforests of Brazil to your home, Mee Pl. 1, Scutacaria steelii captures the lush foliage and dense greenery of the Amazon basin.

Printed with archival pigments on rag watercolor paper, this entrancing botanical conveys the artistic and scientific acuity of Margaret Mee’s original watercolor. Let your art collection flourish with the addition of this blossoming botanical!

About The Flowering Amazon – Oppenheimer Kew Gardens Edition

Margaret Mee’s lavish paintings of orchids and bromeliads from the Amazonian forests represent more than the life and spirit of a talented artist drawn to adventure. Her eloquent and precisely painted visions of the vanishing rainforest lay vibrant testimony to the struggle between nature and commerce, thus working to preserve the wild habitats she painted and loved. She is a twentieth-century embodiment of the artist-explorer, with the added virtue of social consciousness. In this regard, her work lays claim to not only artistic merit and scientific accuracy but stands as a historic witness to preserving a habitat rich in botanical diversity.

The Flowering Amazon – Oppenheimer Kew Gardens Edition makes available a select number of Mee’s paintings from the botanical library collection at The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew as fine art prints. This museum-sanctioned edition of Mee’s captivating work is strictly limited to 300.

About Margaret Mee

Margaret Mee is a botanical artist and environmental activist who, at the age of 43, moved from England to Sao Paulo, Brazil to paint. It was here that she cultivated her appreciation for plant life, which was the central focus of her paintings. Over 30 years, Mee completed 15 expeditions through the Amazon basin during which she – guided by natives – sketched, painted, and collected plants. Her paintings capture orchids, bromeliads, cacti, clusa, and other plants native to the Amazon rainforest. As an environmental activist, Mee used her artwork as a means through which to draw attention to the forces threatening the Amazon rainforest including mining and deforestation.

About Oppenheimer Editions

Established in 1999, our publishing company Oppenheimer Editions was developed in order to produce modern facsimiles of historic works of art. Marrying cutting-edge digital printing technologies with canonical works of art, Oppenheimer Editions has partnered with prestigious museums to make their holdings accessible to the public as fine art prints. Works from the New-York Historical Society’s unrivaled collections of John James Audubon’s watercolors and the Hudson River School paintings are examples of art that otherwise would be unobtainable.

Among the institutional collections we have partnered with are the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Our Oppenheimer Editions prints are not mere reproductions. Rather, they are limited-edition fine art prints made with the finest quality archival pigments on rag watercolor paper and executed to exacting standards.

For more information about Mee Pl. 1, Scutacaria steelii, email us at [email protected] or check out our articles Encountering the Amazon through Margaret Mee’s Lens and “A Genteel Diversion” – Unearthing the Complex History of Women and Botanical Art.

more information about botanical printsView All Articles

Birds and Animal Art Botanical Art Information

An Obsession with Natural History and Victorian Collecting Crazes

April 17, 2024

Spanning the majority of the 19th century, the Victorian era was marked by a rise in fashionable collecting hobbies. Natural history objects were among the [...]

Read More

Botanical Art Information

How to Distinguish Between the Various Editions of Besler’s ‘Garden of Eichstätt’

July 29, 2023

A practical guide to understanding and identifying the different editions of Besler’s folio through paper types and material characteristics.

Read More

Botanical Art

Plant Mutations in the Botanical Prints of Pierre-Joseph Redouté

June 22, 2023

A consideration of the artistic rendering of the Tulip Breaking Virus, and the phenomenon of Rose Perfoliation in Redouté's prints

Read More

Botanical Art

Encountering the Amazon through Margaret Mee’s Lens

June 21, 2023

A consideration of Mee's implicit and overt depictions of symbiotic ecosystems in her paintings of the Amazon Rainforest

Read More

Botanical Art

The Historical Allure of Variegated Tulips

June 20, 2023

Visualizing expansion, abundance, and prestige through depictions of "broken" tulips in the art of Basilius Besler, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Dr. Robert Thornton and Robert Furber

Read More

Botanical Art

The Historical Significance of Botanical Illustration

June 16, 2023

A consideration of the motives behind picturing plants including the functional uses and theoretical implications of floral imagery.

Read More