Bengali polymath Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) is best known for his pioneering contributions to the fields of microwave physics, optics, radio, wireless telegraphy and science fiction. Bose was also a botanist and plant physiologist whose experiments led him to merge the historically separate disciplines—botany and physics—to develop the nascent field of biophysics. Amongst the first to advocate the view that plants are active and exploratory organisms, he believed that vegetal life was the shadow of human life. This essay explores Bose’s own remarkable tuning into nature and the impact that his views and discoveries had on visual artists of that time.