Gilbert’s garden – The botanical illustrations of Gilbert Dashorst

Story by Zannie Flanagan. Photography by Irene Polias.

Page left: Pomegranate scientific illustration showing the stages of growth and cross sections. Top left: Scientific illustration of a red Crassula. Top right: Scientific illustration of a Hakea Laurina aka Pincushion Hakea. Above: Gilbert holds a scientific illustration of a purple Eremophila.

Gilbert Dashorst is one of those quiet achievers, an unsung South Australian treasure. For thirty years, Gilbert was the official scientific/botanical illustrator for the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and South Australia’s State Herbarium and was the last official botanical artist in Australia.

He estimates he has probably completed over 20,000 drawings, paintings and illustrations throughout his career, with many featured in the book Plants of the Adelaide Plains and Hills, produced in collaboration with botanist John Jessop while they were working together at the State Herbarium. The book, first published in 1990, is now in its third edition.

However Gilbert’s prodigious career almost didn’t happen. As a young twenty year old, Gilbert was running and swimming regularly every day. After each run he would stop and splash his face in the cool water of the bird bath in his garden before heading inside. One day, while working at his desk, Gilbert unexpectedly collapsed and was taken to hospital where he lay in a coma for the next three months. He was diagnosed with encephalitis, a life-threatening infection causing inflammation and swelling of the brain tissue. Doctors suspected the water in the bird bath was to blame. >

Above: Gilbert in his Normanville studio.

Eventually, Gilbert began to emerge from the coma, but he had no idea where he was or any recollection of what had happened to him. All he could recognise were images of religious iconography from his catholic past that began to appear before him. ‘Angels and the floating bodies of apostles in white appeared in an ethereal dreamscape,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!’ In fact, the bodies belonged to the nurses and medical staff who, dressed in their whites, seemed to float around Gilbert’s bed as they tended to him.

He had lost his memory and was unable to walk, talk, write or draw. There followed an intensive period of rehabilitation until in 1980 Gilbert was finally well enough to undertake formal study at the North Adelaide School of Art. After graduating, Gilbert travelled to Europe working as a freelance artist before returning to SA in 1983. He then successfully applied for the job of scientific illustrator/botanical artist for the State Herbarium and became only the second artist to ever have been appointed to the role in South Australia. Over the next thirty years, Gilbert would illustrate the flora of South Australia and elsewhere for botanical publications, scientific papers and the Education Unit of the Botanic Gardens.

At the age of 30, Gilbert was awarded a Churchill Fellowship which allowed him to further develop his botanical drawing skills while studying the work of other botanical artists at Leiden Herbarium in the Netherlands and Kew Gardens in London. During this time he continued to research his Dutch heritage and his familial links to the renowned 16th century European Royal Court portrait painter Antonis Mor Van Dashorst, whose work still hangs in illustrious art galleries like the Uffizi in Florence, the Prado in Madrid and the National Museum of Warsaw.

At first, Gilbert’s botanical work and the portraits of his distinguished distant relative seem a world apart. On closer consideration however, there are echoes of Antonis’ work in those of his farflung South Australian kin. Both artists exhibit a forensic attention to detail, a photographic realism and great respect for their subjects. I love the idea that these qualities have travelled down through a DNA timeline stretching five hundred years, which finds Gilbert now sitting in his house in Normanville, painting and drawing in minute detail, much like his famous forebear did centuries ago. And while their attention is turned to very different subject matter, their shared purpose was and is to provide a true likeness to the original in order that Gilbert’s plants or Antonis’ portraits are clearly recognisable to viewers.

Antonis painted his subjects in the grand houses and palaces of Europe. Gilbert too has had his own connection with European royalty. He presented Princess Mary of Denmark with two botanical plates – one of a rose named in her honour that was bred at Ross Roses in Willunga and another featuring the Tasmanian Blue Gum.

Gilbert has always worked directly from source material either fresh or dried. He sits at his desk, microscope and implements to hand, peering closely at the leaves, seeds and flowers before him, dissecting the minute parts of the specimen and studying their intricacies. It’s exacting and painstaking work, and the results are distinctly scientific, partially drawn in pencil and partially coloured by the water-based paint medium gouache. But whimsical elements can be found too, like the tiny baby possum peeking out cheekily from the hollow of a gum tree on the title page of the Adelaide Hills book.

Interestingly, Gilbert’s palette is limited to only three colours, cyan, brilliant yellow and magenta, and when I ask him why, he unashamedly admits that when he went to art school he couldn’t afford to buy a complete palette. ‘I went to see a printer and he told me that those three colours were the basis of their printing palette too, so I knew then that I could do the same,’ he explains.

Gilbert now lives and works from his home studio in Normanville with his partner and fellow artist Judith Sweetman. He still runs and swims every day but avoids the bird bath. And when he’s not painting plants inside, you’ll find him outside in the garden growing them.

His latest exhibition will be on view at the Fleurieu Arthouse in McLaren Vale from November until the end of December and, with a nod to Monet, will be entitled Gilbert’s Garden.

Photographed on location at Naiko Retreat. Hair by Jaz and Michelle at Spoilt Rotten Hair. Makeup by Yvette Victoria Beauty Studio. Models Tom Marshall and Grace Hartley. Photography by Jason Porter.

Page left: Tom wears a 90s Jean Paul Gaultier jacket, red satin shirt, 70s paisley tie with Levi’s 501 jeans. Grace wears an 80s black dress with L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani heels.

This page: Tom wears an 80s shirt and Levi’s 512 jeans. Grace wears a 70s floral chiffon dress, sling back heels,raffia tote bag and a 70s gemstone bracelet.

Grace wears a Leon Cutler Thai Silk dress and jacket, 60s silver shoes, 60s starburst earrings and faux pearl ring.

Tom wears a 90s Jean Paul Gaultier velvet jacket, red satin shirt, 70s paisley tie and Levi’s 501 jeans.

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