Rory McEwen could have been anything, and indeed was many things at once. Born to privilege in the Scottish Borders in 1932, McEwen came of age at a boisterous moment when Britain, after decades of grimness, had begun once again to bloom. His friends at Cambridge included upstarts Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, who helped create Beyond the Fringe. As a musician—12-string guitar—he was a student (and champion) of the music of Leadbelly, and became a key figure in the postwar folk revival. And then, suddenly, in 1964, McEwen decided to stop and paint the flowers. Botanical painting—watercolor on vellum—became the central artistic focus of his life. Inside a small circle—galleries, collectors, connoisseurs, publishers—recognition was immediate. “I have never really been interested in botanical illustration per se,” McEwen once wrote, “but rather in that moment when painting starts to breathe poetry.” Over 100 of his paintings come to Chicago for three months. —Cullen Murphy