Claire Dalby

Joy Claire Allison Dalby (born 20 November 1944) is a British painter, engraver and book illustrator who mainly depicts botanical subjects through watercolour, gouache and wood.

Biography Dalby, whose father was the respected watercolour painter Charles Longbotham, was born at St Andrews in Scotland. She attended the Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls at Acton in West London from 1955 to 1963. She studied art, specialising in engraving and calligraphy, at the City and Guilds of London Art School from 1964 to 1967.

In 1966 Dalby had her first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. That year she was awarded a David Murray landscape studentship and spent time at Flatford Mill in Suffolk, where she met the botanist Kery Dalby; they married in 1967. A number of solo exhibitions followed including at Camberley in Surrey during 1975, at Halifax House in Oxford in 1987 and at the Consort Gallery of Imperial College in 1981 and 1988. Works by Dalby are held in a number of British museums including the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The Royal Collection, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the National Library of Wales also hold examples as do the Hunt Institute and the Australian Biological Resources Study Centre in Canberra.

Selected books The Observer's Book of Lichens by Kenneth Leonard Alvin, 1s edition 1963; 2nd edition 1977 The Family Water Naturalist by Heather Angel & Pat Wolseley, Joseph, 1982. Women Engravers by Patricia Jaffe, 1988. Even the Flowers by Freda Downie, Gruffyground Press, 1989, with an engraved frontispiece by Dalby Claire Dalby's Picture Book, 1989. Colour Identification Guide to Grasses, Sedges and Ferns by Francis Rose, 1991. Crucifers of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by T.C.G. Rich, 1991. Flora of Australia, Volume 54, 1992. Images from Nature, Natural History Museum, 1998. 2004 pbk edition

Memberships Dalby is a member of or affiliated with the following organisations;- 1973 Elected associate of the Royal Watercolour Society 1977 Elected full member of the Royal Watercolour Society 1978 Elected associate of Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. 1982 Elected full member of Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. 1991 Vice-president of the Royal Watercolour Society.

Dalby is also a member of the Society of Wood Engravers.