Flowers Cultivated in the Botanic Garden, Rio Janeiro, Brazil 

Editor: So, here we have "Flowers Cultivated in the Botanic Garden, Rio Janeiro, Brazil" by Marianne North, and it looks like it was painted en plein air. I am really taken by how tactile the painting looks - you can really see the layering of the oil paint! What draws your eye? Curator: It’s precisely the application of paint that intrigues me most. Look how North deploys the materiality of oil paint not merely to represent these botanical specimens but also to document her experience. The labor embedded within the journey to Rio, the cultivation of these exotic species, and the very act of translating them onto canvas, are all interwoven. It becomes more than just a painting, don't you think? It’s a record of colonial enterprise and the classification of the natural world through artistic production. Editor: Absolutely! It’s easy to just see pretty flowers, but thinking about it as a kind of record or document, that opens up a lot. The "en plein air" aspect must have really shaped her process... Curator: Precisely. How does working in situ shape our understanding? Does it change how we view this image, knowing it was created within that very location, grappling with its atmosphere, the very matter that constitutes Rio, pressed directly onto the canvas? It speaks volumes about consumption and representation during the height of colonial exploration. Editor: It is so fascinating to consider that, it makes the artwork speak of so much more! Thinking about the colonial undertones of what might look like a pretty botanical picture is something that never occurred to me. Curator: And this intersection—beauty born from a process deeply entrenched in material exploration and exploitation—demands that we look critically at what stories are really being told.