Did you know that the Royal Horticultural Society has employed an official artist to paint beautiful life-size portraits of orchids for over 120 years?

Find out more about this living tradition and the legacy of beautiful images of this intoxicating and fascinating family of plants.

Meet Deborah Lambkin.

She is the Royal Horticultural Society’s official Orchid Artist. She paints ‘portraits’ of orchids given awards by the RHS Orchid Committee. She also paints orchids for Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and The Eric Young Orchid Foundation in Jersey.

Deborah is the ninth official RHS Orchid Artist since the RHS Orchid Committee appointed the first artist in 1897. She trained at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. She became the official orchid painter in 2005. She currently lives and works in London.

Her paintings are part of a collection of over 7,000 orchid portraits looked after by the RHS Lindley Library. These beautiful paintings are a  vast and unique working collection. Even in the age of digital photography, a watercolour painting remains the best way of recording  these fleeting blooms.

Orchid breeders have been creating hybrid orchids since the 1850s and the RHS Orchid Committee has been judging and giving awards to new orchids since 1889. The committee wanted accurate portraits of orchids to help make sure that it did not give an award to the same orchid twice under different names. It has been estimated that, since the introduction of tropical species into cultivation, orchid growers have produced more than 100,000 different hybrids and cultivars.

The first orchid artist was Nelly Roberts, who held the role for nearly 60 years and painted over 4000 of the 7000 orchid portraits now in the Lindley Library Collection. The daughter of a watchmaker from Brixton, she lived and worked in a room above the family shop.

She established the signature style of the RHS orchid portrait – with the flower always painted face-on and to scale, capturing its award-winning qualities as accurately as possible. Nelly Roberts often added a coloured background so that the paler orchid flowers would stand out.

Deborah paints around 30 orchids each year. Around once a month, the RHS orchid committee meets and assesses orchid plants. Orchids are judged on the quality of their flowers, clarity of colours, shape and patterning, and their ‘substance’ or firmness. The best are given an Award of Merit or a First Class Certificate. Deborah is then asked to paint the ‘portraits’ of these orchids. The Orchid Committee often turn to the RHS orchid paintings to spot any improvements that have been made to earlier versions of similar hybrids.

Before starting an orchid portrait, Deborah talks to the RHS Orchid Committee to identify the specific characteristics of the award-winning orchid that they would like her to capture.

This is how she describes her next steps:

Deborah continues: