Charles Empson, a print and watercolor dealer in Bath, England, spent three years traveling the northern part of South America, for the most part, in what is now Colombia, from 1824 to 1827.

His original drawings of the exotic plants of South America, which he first encountered on that journey, introduce an artist of superb technique and achievement better known through the narratives of his travels in South America.

Empson traveled from Cienega, on the northern coast of Colombia, through the central and eastern cordilleras of the Andes to Honda, in the south, via the river Magdalena, and east into Venezuela.