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.
Her visits were not rushed; staying in one place for a long time, including a year or more each in Brazil, India, and Australasia. She came near our region in 1875 while painting the coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervivums) in northern California.
North’s most famous legacy is the gallery at Kew Gardens near London devoted exclusively to her work and containing over 800 of her paintings. This collection is illustrated in the 2019 book “Marianne North: The Kew Collection” that includes the paintings’ captions written by the artist.
I have not seen the gallery, but the book is similarly organized by geographical areas. This allows the viewer to appreciate the diversity of plants and landscapes on a global scale. As noted by Christopher Mills in the Introduction, the paintings are “an increasingly important visual record of where many, now rare, plants grew in the past and how landscapes have changed.”
Reviewed by: Brian Thompson on December 2, 2024
Excerpted from the Winter 2025 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin