A red-and-yellow tulip in the ripe sheen of fullness, the lines of color in its petals at times no wider than the hair of a paint brush. A brown-and-purple onion, the flaking outer skin so delicate and brittle that it seems to crackle. A mottled and disintegrating umber leaf, veins prominent, its days of autumnal glory forever past.

Can minimalism be lavish? Such are the botanical paintings of Rory McEwen—watercolor on vellum—each leaf or flower, fruit or seed, standing alone against a white background. Scores of his paintings are now on display at the Davis Art Museum, near Boston, on the campus of Wellesley College. McEwen is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished botanical painters of the past century—a description that sells him short.

He 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. He toured America and performed blues-inflected Scottish folk songs on the Ed Sullivan Show. Back in Britain, he was a performer and presenter on the pioneering program Hulabaloo. Friends and family attest to a disposition that was buoyant, generous, encouraging, and warmly subversive. Creative people of every kind converged on his London home. It was there that George Harrison of the Beatles took sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar.

And then, suddenly, in 1964, McEwen decided to stop and paint the flowers. He was the great-great grandson of the botanist and illustrator John Lindley, and had drawn and painted since his boyhood. At Eton, his drawing master was Wilfrid Blunt. Now botanical painting 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 to Blunt, “but rather in that moment when painting starts to breathe poetry.” At the Davis exhibition, you can hear it all around you.

“Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature” is on at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, until December 15

Cullen Murphy is an editor at large for The Atlantic and the author of several books, including God’s Jury, Cartoon County, and Just Passing Through