Marianne North (1830-1890) was one of the most famous women botanical illustrators of any era. Born in Britain, she traveled the world, visiting every continent to paint the native plants, many unknown to European science at the time. She worked in situ with oil paints and often recorded both humans and animals associated with her subject.
A most interesting book in the Miller Library is “Chilean Flora through the eyes of Marianne North 1884.” Published in Chile in 1999, originally in Spanish, we have the English translation that is an account of the artist’s visit to Chile, the last of her journeys. As authors Antonia Echenique (a Chilean historian) and María Victoria Legassa (a Chilean sociologist) explain, her work was not previously well-known but, upon her visit, she “attracted the attention of a number of contemporary Chilean intellectuals and scientists.”
An 1884 article by a Chilean official captures the local impact of North’s work, as do her own journal entries. Essays written in 1999 discuss both the artistic and scientific merit of her work by a British art critic (“its uniqueness that needs to be first recognized and celebrated”) and a Chilean botanist (“once again, art and science unite in the work of a single person”).
North’s main interest in going to Chile was to see the forests of Araucaria araucana, known In Chile as pehuén. It grows in Britain (and Seattle), but not with the splendor of its native land. Even North recognized how inappropriate was the use of the common name of “Monkey Puzzle” as it grows “where there are no monkeys.”
Reviewed by: Brian Thompson on December 2, 2024
Excerpted from the Winter 2025 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin