October 27
On October 27, 1887, Marianne North's gallery at Kew Gardens received its 832nd painting, completing what she had been adding to since 1882: the most comprehensive visual record of the world's plant life produced by a single person in the nineteenth century. She had traveled to every inhabited continent, collecting and painting plant specimens, over eighteen years of largely solo travel. The Royal Botanical Society had not admitted her as a fellow because she was a woman.
North was born in 1830 in Hastings, England, into a comfortable family. Her father was a Liberal MP. She studied flower painting as a young woman, met Charles Darwin and was encouraged by him, and traveled to Jamaica in 1871 at forty to begin what would become a systematic photographic and painted record of the world's flora.
She traveled alone or with minimal company: Jamaica, Brazil, Tenerife, Japan, Borneo, Java, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Seychelles, Chile, California, Canada, and Hawaii. She painted in the field, not from specimens brought back to a studio. The paintings are scientifically accurate records of living plants in their natural contexts — seventeen previously unknown species were named after her, including Northea seychellana and Kniphofia northiae.
She funded the Marianne North Gallery at Kew Gardens herself, had it built, arranged the paintings, and donated the collection to Kew. It is still there, unchanged.
She died in 1890 at sixty.
North produced the most comprehensive visual botanical survey of the nineteenth century through self-funded solo travel to every inhabited continent over eighteen years. The Royal Botanical Society that benefited from her work did not admit her because she was a woman. She was elected a fellow of the Geographical Society — one of the few scientific societies of the era that admitted women. She funded and built her own gallery because she could not rely on institutional support.
A new forgotten woman, every day. Direct to you.