Since his first exhibitions in the early 1990s, Marc Quinn has forged a rich and complex art practice exploring themes including nature, beauty, hybridity and genetic manipulation. In 2000, Quinn's Garden installation at the Fondazione Prada in Milan consisted of flowering plants from diverse habitats exhibited in an industrial-sized refrigerator. Using liquid silicone to maintain the garden at its most luxuriant state, Quinn suspended the garden in a state of perpetual beauty, in which the passage from life to death was indefinitely deferred.

Portraits of landscapes considers similar themes. Based on details from an earlier series of hyperrealistic floral paintings, this print series alludes to the traditional genres of portraiture and landscape as well as to still-life painting. Quinn draws a parallel between the idealisation of a subject in art, and images of youth and beauty that saturate contemporary society. Like much of his work, these prints reflect on attempts to overcome the transience of life through scientific knowledge and artistic expression.