You are bidding on a beautiful original watercolor by the late Esther Heins. This is an unfinished, unframed, work on paper.

For over 40 years, Heins worked exclusively in the field of botanical art, specializing in full-scale watercolors of flowering trees and shrubs, many from the living collections of the Arnold Arboretum. A book of her watercolors, Flowering Trees and Shrubs: The Botanical Art of Esther Heins, was published in 1987. Heins' work has been featured in numerous international and traveling exhibitions.

Her paintings are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Art in Pittsburgh, the Arnold Arboretum, and many private collections across the country. In the tradition of the craft of natural science illustrations, her watercolors - the actual size of the plants - are recognized as not only botanically accurate but also as works of art. Born in Brooklyn on Nov. 10, 1908, Heins was a longtime Massachusetts resident, living and painting in Marblehead. She attended the Massachusetts School of Art (now the Massachusetts College of Art), where she studied with Ernest Major, a painter of the "Boston School."