Famous Trees title page, Dropmore Press

The fine drawings and paintings by Stanley Roy Badmin (1906–1989) have rather come to epitomise “England’s landscapes” and he was exceptional gifted when it came to the illustration of natural scenes and trees in particular. His work encompassed paintings, commissioned works for adverts and posters, as well as illustrations for many books. This is a particularly luscious example of his art from a 1952 book of “Famous Trees” by Richard St Barbe Baker and published by the private Dropmore Press. The frontispiece is of the Panshanger Oak in Hertfordshire that still stands with a girth of 7.6m and was recorded as being a fine tree as far back as 1789 by Gilbert White. It stood in the grounds of Panshanger House that was demolished soon after this sketch (between 1952 and 1954) and the grounds are now used for gravel extraction.