Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden

Whether a sacred sanctuary, a place for scientific study, a haven for the solitary thinker or a space for pure enjoyment and delight, gardens are where man and nature meet.

Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden reveals the way in which gardens have been celebrated in art across four centuries.

Bringing together paintings, botanical studies, drawings, books, manuscripts and decorative arts, the exhibition explores the changing character of the garden from the 16th to the early 20th century. It includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Maria Sibylla Merian and Carl Faberge, and some of the earliest and rarest surviving depictions of gardens and plants.

Of particular interest to Tudor history lovers is the family portrait of Henry VIII, which contains the first known representation of a secular garden in British art and mid-sixteenth century gardening manuals.

Read our review of the exhibition here