NZNOG Journal 104 - Our Most Ambitious Publication Yet

Journal Number 104
August 2007

EDITORIAL

Bruce Irwin's Genius And Our Most Ambitious Publication Yet
By Ian St George

The Group has just published its most important project to date. The 750+ page limited edition volume of Bruce Irwin's orchid drawings is a monumental work, a tribute to the artist - and to the collator Brian Tyler. It has been funded from profits on earlier publications, in turn made possible by the generosity of those who gave their energy and time.

The events and dates of Bruce Irwin's orchid life have been related elsewhere [1, 2], so here I will state simply that he is a distinguished orchidologist who has used a uniquely keen talent to reconcile apparently inimical opposites.

He has the questioning, proof-seeking, searching, doubting, disbelieving mind of the true scientist, the analyser, the anatomist, the dissector. And yet he combines that quest for understanding structure and function with the eye of the artist, the beauty-seeker, sensitive to colour, to form, to pattern, to the overall shape and character of things, not just their component parts. And to those he adds the finely honed skill of the man who has mastered his craft, who knows without thinking how to convey the three dimensional shape of a thing with pencil on paper.

That is the nature of the best botanical illustrators of course [3, 4].They show, along with Keats, that art and science are inseparable (Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know) [5], but to those two they add craft, and so in their rare ability they encompass all three. Science, art, craft, the plant illustrator's trinity.

Bruce Irwin has illustrated New Zealand native orchids for most of his long life, at first in delicate watercolours, but later as detailed pencil drawings, as often of whole plants as of microscopic dissections; they are exquisite, and Dan Hatch has referred to his "genius with the pencil".

Some of his work has been published in books [1, 2, 6-9], and botanical journals, and he has been a frequent contributor to the New Zealand Native Orchid Journal. But a substantial body of his later drawings has not been published, and is now made available, along with a selection of earlier watercolours.

Some of the drawings are finished, ready for publication, but perhaps more vigorous and interesting are the working notes, the sketches and jottings plainly memory aids, informal messages to himself, often about fine nuances of colour of a flower part ("pale cinnamon", "sienna", "honey colour", "lightly cooked biscuit colour"; a Prasophyllum has a darkish green stem, and "flowers a rather similar green with indigo/purplish flushes"), often comparing a physical quality to a more familiar object (a texture "like half cooked bread", bulges at the base of a Pterostylis flower the shape of a "Rubens bottom", a projecting part like a "schnozzle", a rough texture described as "sugar coated", the swellings at the base of the lip of the newly discovered Drymoanthus flavus like "two young bosoms").

When he feels uncertainty or perceives inaccuracy his jottings express it ("very subtle blends of form and tone hard to portray" he writes of the labellum of Adelopetalum tuberculatum) - he never stretches or simplifies the truth to make a point, but admits doubt freely - as a scientist should.

You cannot fully understand a clock until you pull one to bits and put it back together again. You cannot properly understand an orchid until you dissect it and reconstruct it in the drawing of it. The botanical illustrator learns his plant thus, and in doing so learns to discern departures from the familiar.

Bruce Irwin has played a part in the recognition of several new New Zealand orchids - among them Thelymitra sanscilia, Molloybas cryptanthus, Pterostylis irsoniana, several Nematoceras in the rivulare and trilobum groups, Pterostylis irwinii, several Pterostylis in the aff. montana group, and more.

Other highlights of his orchid life have included:

He has been a recipient of the Allan Mere, the John Easton Award, and the Wellington Botanical Society Jubilee Award.
Pterostylis irwinii and P. irsoniana were named for him.
His artistic and innovative orchid displays for the Tauranga Orchid Society have won national and local awards.
He is involved with the Te Puna Quarry Park near Tauranga.
He designed the NZ Native Orchid Group's logo.
He is a Life Member of that Group.

The handwritten annotations, meant only for his own eyes, have been transcribed painstakingly by Brian Tyler, for whose long hours at the keyboard we should be very grateful. The (now legible) notes give us an insight into the private and fascinating world of the artist-scientist.

References

1. St George IM, McCrae D. The New Zealand orchids: natural history and cultivation.
   NZ Native Orchid Group, Wellington,1990. Pages 16-17.
2. St George IM (editor). Bruce Irwin's orchid paintings.
    NZ Native Orchid Group's Historical Series 2004; 13: 2-4.
3. Whitehead, P.J.P. "Should fate command me to the farthest verge": the Reverend Richard Laishley
    in New Zealand, 1860-1897. In Hoare M.E. and Bell L.G. (eds).
    In search of New Zealand's scientific heritage. Bulletin 21,
    The Royal Society of New Zealand, Wellington, 1984.
4. St George IM. Nature guide to the New Zealand orchids. Random House, Auckland, 1999. Pages 11-17.
5. Keats J. Ode on a Grecian urn. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1900.
    QuillerCouch A, ed. Oxford, England, 1919.
6. Moore LB, Edgar E. Flora of New Zealand: Vol. II.
    Government Printer, Wellington, 1970. Pages 102-167.
7. Moore LB, Irwin JB. The Oxford book of New Zealand plants. OUP, Wellington, 1978.
8. Clarkson BD, Irwin JB. Vegetation of Egmont National Park New Zealand. Wellington,
    Science Information Publishing Centre DSIR. 1986
9. St George IM, Irwin JB, Hatch ED. Field guide to the New Zealand orchids.
    NZ Native Orchid Group. 1st edition 1996; 2nd edition (with EA Scanlen) 2001; 3rd edition 2005.