A legacy of ancient oaks

This beautiful book is a celebration of the mighty oak, through the passion and vision of artist Mark Frith.

Mark has drawn large scale portraits of 22 of Britain's oldest living oaks, with exceptional detail conveyed in these intricate graphite works, bringing the ancient features of these majestic individuals to life on the page.

Growing up in the Gloucestershire countryside, Mark enjoyed a childhood experiencing the natural world and in particular developed a huge closeness to a local ancient character – the Great Oak at Nibley Green.

Mark would return to this tree in 2010 as the first of his series of oak drawings, commissioned by the publisher, poet, philanthropist and planter of trees Felix Dennis.

These large-scale drawings measuring 1.7 m wide took Mark three and a half years to complete and were finished just before Felix Dennis’s death in 2014.

Following Felix Dennis's wishes, his estate bequeathed 10 of the drawings to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This stunning book is the ideal gift for art and tree lovers alike, and a fitting dedication to these ancient individuals.

I hope that in some modest way these drawings express man's profound relationship with the natural world, and, if it has one, something of the soul of the ancient oak tree. Mark Frith