A botanical watercolour of figure under a breadfruit tree by Caribbean artist John Tyley,...

A botanical watercolour of figure under a breadfruit tree by Caribbean artist John Tyley, circa 1790, signed and titled "Artocarpus incisus,' mounted, glazed and framed, painting 37.5 x 23cm.

John Tyley worked as a botanical illustrator at the historic St. Vincent Botanical Garden in the late 1700s sketching and painting tropical plants. Aside from the beautiful and detailed illustrations he left behind, little is known of this native Caribbean mans life.

The natural artistic abilities of John Tyley, a native Caribbean man of mixed-race origin, caught the attention of Alexander Anderson, an English surgeon and botanist, who served as the superintendent of the St. Vincent Botanical Garden from 1785 until his death in 1811. Impressed by the native Antiguans talent, Anderson took him under his wing and employed Tyley as a botanical illustrator. During his time working with Anderson, Tyley resided at the estate on the Botanical Garden property.

He created detailed watercolors of the tropical plants of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for Andersons text on the flora of St. Vincent, Hortus Sti. Vincentii Tabulae, as well as for the exhaustive plant lists Anderson kept of the gardens plants. Some of these drawings including crop species such as avocado (Persea americana), cashew (Anacardium occidentale), as well as exotics like East India gooseberry (Phyllanthus acidus), Barbados Cherry (Malpighia glabra), the Malay apple (Syzygium malaccense), achiote (Bixa orellenea) and tar pot (Clusia flava). A collection of Tyleys watercolor drawings and Andersons unpublished manuscript Hortus Sti. Vincentii Tabulae can be found in the archives of the Linnean Society.

Despite the survival of his beautiful and detailed illustrations in the Linnean Society, London and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Pennsylvania, not much is known about Tyleys life after Andersons death. A note in Andersons History of St. Vincent, suggests that he sought to find Tyley a position in England. Whatever happened to Tyley after his work at the Botanical Garden remains unknown.

The introduction of the breadfruit to St Vincent in 1793 via the ship Providence was the cause of much excitement and Anderson's account states that within 2 years and three months all fifty breadfruit plants had produced healthy and bountiful crops essential for the sustanance of the local population.