Edgar Dell

Edgar Dell (28 November 1901 – 18 April 2008) was a Western Australian painter best known for his watercolour paintings of that state's wildflowers.

Born in England in 1901, he emigrated to Western Australia in 1924, where he bought and cleared a bush block in Paulls Valley in the Shire of Kalamunda, establishing an orchard there.

[1] These were accompanied by a botanical description by Charles Gardner, then Government Botanist, and were so popular that they were compiled into book form and published under the title Western Australian Wildflowers in 1935.

A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1958, and again in the 1970s under the title Wildflowers of Western Australia.

This ran to numerous editions, albeit with ever-diminishing numbers of Dell's plates.

An example of Dell's art: Dryandra sessilis (now Banksia sessilis ), first published in 1935.