Lovely Free Printable Lily Drawings and Illustrations

These vintage lily drawings and illustrations are the latest addition to the wonderful collection of free vintage flower prints on Pictureboxblue.

Many flowers that are called a lily aren’t lilies. They aren’t true lilies as they don’t belong to the flowering plant genus Lilium. Examples include water lilies, lilies of the valley, etc.

They got their lily names because their flowers resemble lilies. You will see from the lily drawings below that they have showy trumpet-shaped flowers.

In this collection of floral lily illustrations, I have focused on just true lilies.

Meaning & Symbolism of Lily Flowers

Lilies are grown as commercial ornamental plants. They are the fourth most popular flowers sold by florists. The most popular flower is the rose (illustrations here). They are one of my favourite flowers to receive. I love to have a bunch of tall lilies in the centre of my table.

The meaning of lilies varies from culture to culture and by the color of the flowers. They most commonly mean devotion or purity.

In the Victorian language of flowers, lilies portray love, ardor, and affection for your loved ones.

Lilies are the flowers most commonly used at funerals in the west. That is becuase the flowers symbolically signify that the soul of the deceased has been restored to a state of innocence.

Whereas, in China, lilies are used in weddings because they are tied to 100 years of love and to good luck.

Christians associated lilies, especially Madonna lilies, with the Virgin Mary.

The most common colour of Lilies is white, yellow, pink, red, and orange. Each colour symbolizes something different.

• A White lily traditionally symbolizes modesty and new beginnings (purity).
• Pink (stargazer) lilies symbolize love, femininity stand for love, femininity, admiration and abundance.
• Red lilies symbolize love and passion. They make a nice change to roses in Valentine’s bouquet.
• Orange (tiger) lilies symbolize confidence, pride, and wealth.
• Yellow lilies are great ‘thank you’ flowers. They symbolize thankfulness and their sunny color happiness.

The Lily Drawings and Illustrations

All the vintage lily drawings and illustrations are in the Public Domain and free to download and use.

Click on the title above the vintage lily drawing you want to download. A high-resolution flower illustration will open in a new window on your browser. If you right-click on that image, the option to save it to your hard drive should appear.

1. Orange Lily

An 1850 orange lily drawing from the Welcome Collection.

2. Orange Lily on Black

Another orange lily from the Welcome collection. This is an etching by John Harris 1805.

 The orange lily is also called the fire lily and tiger lily. However, as you will see in this post, many varieties of lilies are called tiger lilies.  It grows in mountain meadows and on hillsides of Europe from Spain to Ukraine.

3. Lilium Testaceum

This is a beautiful illustration of a yellow lily (Lilium testaceum). The image is from Edwards’ botanical register, an illustrated horticultural magazine that ran from 1815 to 1847. The botanical illustrator was Sydenham Edwards.

4. Lily Seed Packet

A seed packet with an illustration of a white lily by Currie Brothers Company Seed Trade Catalog Collection 1905.

You can find more vintage seed packets here.

5. White Lily

The white lily is also commonly known as the Madonna lily and is a true lily. The lily symbolizes purity and virginity and is often seen in paintings of the Virgin Mary, hence the name. 

The lily used to have medicinal uses and has been cultivated for over 3000 years.

This illustration is by William Curtis from The Botanical Magazine 1794.

6. Mountain Lily Seed Packet

Another seed packet lily drawing, this time of a mountain lily. A true lily native to Japan and is sometimes called the golden rayed lily or the goldband lily.

7. Showy Lily

The Showy lily is an East Asian species of plants in the lily family. It is native to southern Japan and southern China.

This is an 1897 lily drawing from Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse by Edward Step.

8. Art Nouveau White Lily Drawing

This is an art nouveau style illustration of the white lily by Maurice Pillard-Verneuil 1903. Many more of his wonderful art nouveau floral illustrations can be found here.

9. Lilium chalcedonicum

From Curtis’s The Botanical Magazine. The lily was drawn by James Sowerby, who is well known for his fungi and mushroom illustrations.

10. Henry’s lily

Sometimes called tiger lily, it’s native to the mountains of central China. The flowers are orange, spotted black, and unscented. 

From Curtis’s Botanical Magazine drawn by Matilda Smith 1891.

11. Lilium lancifolium

This lily is also sometimes called tiger lily. The flower is native to China, Japan, Korea, and the Russian Far East. It is widely planted as an ornamental because of its showy orange-and-black flowers.

From The florist and pomologist 1873.

12. Lilium leichtlinii

Another tiger lily from North-East Asia, but this one is yellow. This lily illustration is from “Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l’Europe“, (Flowers of the Greenhouses and Gardens of Europe).

13. See Through Lily

This is a Japanese lily. Its native name sukashi-yuri, which literally translates as “see-through lily”, due to the gaps between its tepals.

Another lily painting from Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe.

14. Turks Cap Mountain Lily

The flower color is typically a pink-purple, with dark spots, the flowers are scented. This lily print is from Alpen-Flora: Westalpen.

15. Fritillaria meleagris

This lily has several common names, from drooping tulip to Lazarus’s Bell, snakes head, and Fritillary, to just name a few. It is a Eurasian lily with a chequered pattern in shades of purple or is sometimes pure white.

16. Fritillaria imperialis

Also commonly known as the crown imperial. “Imperialis”, literally “of the emperor”, refers to the large circle of golden flowers of the lily, reminiscent of an emperor’s crown.

This lily painting was by Sebastian Wegmayr 1857.

17. Dogtooth Violet

The flower is found in damp, lightly shaded settings such as deciduous woodland. Another lily drawing from The Botanical Magazine.

18. Giant Himalayan Lily

The giant Himalayan lily, is the largest species of any of the lily plants, growing up to 3.5 meters high.

Another vintage lily drawing from Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe.

19. Philadelphia Lily

A perennial species of lily native to North America. The colorful painting is from the book Birds and Nature (1900).

20. Lilies from The Canadian horticulturist

21 Jane Loudon Lilies

A collection of lilies from Jane Loudon’s book “The ladies’ flower-garden of bulbous ornamental plants”, 1841. You can find many more of Jane Loudon’s bulb flower prints here

Lilies are sometimes confused with irises, check out these vintage Japanese iris paintings.

There are more lily prints in the Mark Catesby print collection, the Temple of Flora and the Maria Sibylla Merian prints.

I hope you enjoyed these beautiful vintage lily drawings and found ones that you liked. Don’t forget to check out many more of the vintage flower illustrations on Pictureboxblue. Such as the vintage orchid prints and daffodil flower drawings.

Other floral collections include tulip paintings, peony paintings and vintage pictures of poppies.

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