Charlotte Brooks is the Art Curator at the RHS Lindley Library in London. She has worked with the Society's botanical art collections since 2003. Alongside researching, cataloguing, and curating heritage artworks, she also works closely with contemporary artists to present the annual RHS Botanical Art and Photography Show, and as the Secretary for the Botanical Art Judging Panel. Her first book, RHS Botanical Illustration: The Gold Medal Winners, was published in 2019, updated in 2025 with additional artworks. Her second book RHS Orchids: A history through Botanical Illustration was published in 2022.

Highly regarded by her contemporaries and even described by botanist Dr Henry Noltie as “the greatest botanical artist of her time and among the greatest of all time”, Lilian Snelling dedicated her life to portraying plants with exacting scientific clarity and striking beauty. Today, over 600 of her works are cared for by the RHS Lindley Library, charting her development from enthusiastic amateur to the principal artist of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine for three decades.

Photographic portrait of Lilian Snelling by Harold Read Marchant

Early life

Snelling was born in 1879 in St Mary Cray, Orpington, to a family of brewers and millers. What little else we know about her childhood comes mostly from census records, which offer once-a-decade glimpses into her early life, and newspaper articles.

By 1891, a 12-year-old Lilian was living away from home at a small boarding school in Tunbridge Wells, along with two of her sisters, Margaret and Hilda, and two of her cousins, Florence and Beatrice. Her other sister Edith, and younger brother were still living at home.

In September 1897, Bromley and District Times reported that an 18-year-old Lilian achieved a second-class award for ‘Elementary freehand’ drawing examinations held in connection with the Bromley School of Science and Art, offering rare insight into her formative art education.

Young adulthood in Tunbridge Wells

By 1901, aged 22, Lilian was the only Snelling still living at the school. No longer as a pupil, she is recorded as a visitor living on her own means. It is not clear exactly why Lilian stayed on in Tunbridge Wells while her sisters returned to St Mary Cray but the artworks held at the RHS Lindley Library hint at a possible explanation.

Snelling’s earliest surviving paintings were created during this period of her life. They consist of a series of beautiful composite watercolours of wildflowers and fungi, observed by Snelling in her local Kent and East Sussex area. Though quite painterly and loose in style, they already show the attention that Snelling paid to the natural world, and her artistic flair. Each sheet contains multiple studies, along with the date, location, local common name and Latin identification.

Perhaps Snelling stayed in Tunbridge Wells and began painting in earnest because she was attending art school in London at the time? We know from Snelling’s obituary that she studied lithography under the artist Frank Morley Fletcher (1866–1949) but not when or where. Fletcher taught at Central School of Arts and Crafts – just a train ride away from Tunbridge Wells – between 1897 and 1904, so the timings align. However, Snelling also spent time in Edinburgh from 1915 to 1921, when Fletcher was Director of the Edinburgh College of Art, so it’s also possible she trained with him in Scotland.

Left: Lilian Snelling, Composite wildflowers (I. [Fungi]). A/LSN/WILD/4
Right: Lilian Snelling, Composite wildflowers (I. Lonicera periclymenum). A/LSN/WILD/30

A period of tragedy

Sadly, in her twenties, Lilian lost both of her parents in quick succession: her father three days before Christmas in 1902, followed not long after by her mother in 1907.
The Snelling siblings entered the world of work, taking on a variety of professions. Margaret and Hilda followed their father into the brewing and milling industry as bookkeepers. As for Lilian, the 1911 census lists her as a ‘painting mistress (artist)’, working of her own account. Her brother John, meanwhile, took up work as a nurseryman in Harbledown near Canterbury, having returned from boarding school in Lewisham. He would later go on to become a gardener, working in Sevenoaks – an interesting horticultural parallel to Lilian’s botanical interests.

Commission by Henry J. Elwes

In 1915, the entomologist, botanist and ‘gentleman collector’ Henry J. Elwes (1846–1922) commissioned Lilian to paint his plant collections at Colesbourne in Gloucestershire.

Left: Photographic portrait of Henry J Elwes. Source: Wikipedia.
Right: A painting of Omphalodes Luciliae completed as part of Snelling’s 1915 commission. A/LSN/HJE/204

It is not clear exactly how Elwes and Snelling were introduced but the RHS Lindley Collections offer a tantalising glimpse into the timeline. Two paintings dated April 1905 give their location as Colesbourne (Elwes’ home), suggesting that Snelling and Elwes were already in contact some ten years before her commission.  The paintings are markedly more formal in style than Snelling’s earlier work, showing her progress towards the level of detail and accuracy that would come to define her later career.

Left: Lilian Snelling, Tulipa fosteriana, 1905. A/LSN/HJE/267
Right: Lilian Snelling, Iris bucharica, 1905. A/LSN/HJE/171

Elwes encouraged Lilian’s development as a botanical artist and championed her professionally. His subsequent introduction of Snelling to Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, then Professor of Botany at the University of Edinburgh, led to her next commission.

Edinburgh

Accompanied by Elwes, Snelling spent three weeks at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in both May 1915 and May 1916. Her work during these visits clearly impressed Balfour because he invited her to move to Edinburgh to record plants for him in December 1917.

The Edinburgh team Snelling joined was much reduced: with the outbreak of the First World War, some 73 men left to fight, 20 of whom never returned.

Balfour was reportedly an extremely demanding employer, giving harsh criticisms and occasionally even ripping up Lilian’s work. During this time, Snelling also continued to receive consignments of plants to paint from Elwes at Colesbourne. Her productivity during this period was remarkable, especially considering her ill health: she suffered from ‘neuritis’ in her right arm, and had to return to England to rest for the winter of 1919-20.

The collection of 430 drawings and paintings of Rhododendrons and Primulas she completed for Bayley Balfour are now held in the library at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Upon Bayley Balfour’s retirement in 1921, Snelling returned to England for good.

Left: Lilian Snelling, Meconopsis delavayi, 1915. A/LSN/HJE/189
Right: Lilian Snelling, Galeopsis versicolor (Galeopsis speciosa), 1920. A/LSN/HJE/151

Snelling, the RHS, and Curtis’ Botanical Magazine

Snelling’s relationship with the Royal Horticultural Society was shaped by the support of one of her most significant patrons, Reginald Cory (1871–1934). A collector and benefactor of extraordinary breadth, Cory played a crucial role in safeguarding Curtis’s Botanical Magazine during a period of financial uncertainty. This long running journal, founded in 1787 by William Curtis, had been published under the auspices of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.  When it was determined that Kew could no longer maintain it, Cory acted, alongside Lionel de Rothschild and Henry J. Elwes, to ensure the continuation of the publication. He personally funded the 1921 volume, insisting on the highest standards of reproduction and artistic quality. It was delayed over many years and finally published in 1938, after Cory’s death.

Photographic portrait of Reginald Cory

Cory engaged Snelling to illustrate the magazine at a moment when its production was under intense pressure. Although she was based in Kent, Snelling spent periods staying at Kew so that she could work directly from living plant specimens. The demands of preparing illustrations from fresh material, preserved specimens and adapting earlier drawings placed a heavy burden on her time.

Snelling was responsible not only for the original paintings but also for preparing zinc plates for printing, an unusual dual skillset that made her indispensable. Until the adoption of colour printing in 1946, she also produced hand-coloured pattern plates to guide colourists. Alongside her work for the magazine, Snelling also painted records of hundreds of award-winning plants for the Society, helping to create a visual archive of horticultural achievement.

Snelling served as Curtis’s principal artist from 1922 until 1952, later assisted by Stella Ross-Craig. Despite periods of ill health and a punishing workload that was poorly matched to her pay, her skill, resilience and commitment sustained the magazine through years of delay. Her output considering these challenges is nothing short of extraordinary: she produced more than 800 paintings and plates, establishing a standard of scientific accuracy and artistic excellence that continues to define Curtis’s Botanical Magazine today.

Legacy

In 1954, Snelling was appointed MBE in recognition of her enormous contribution to botanical art. On her retirement in 1955, she received the RHS’s highest honour, the Victoria Medal of Honour. The 169^th volume of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine was dedicated to her, “remarkable delicacy of accurate outlines, brilliancy of colour and intricate gradation of tone”.

Her work remains a cornerstone of the RHS Lindley Collections, consulted by scientists, artists and researchers alike. Through her drawings, we see not only the precision required for scientific illustration but also an artist’s deep affection for the living subjects she portrayed.

Discover more

Artworks by Lilian Snelling on RHS Digital Collections