Nature's Bounty

This exhibition combines the kind of deliciously detailed paintings of the world's fruit, vegetables and edible plants that will be familiar to previous visitors to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery with art drawn from some exceptional 18th- and 19th-century books. These range from a volume that concerns itself only with apples and pears to an 1863 first edition that was full of chromolithographs (multicoloured prints) of tropical plants, painstakingly restored from very poor condition for this exhibition. These latter works of art were executed by Berthe Hoola Van Nooten, a widow who was left by her husband with huge debts and five young children; her hopes the book would make her fortune were disappointed, but their quality is exceptional.