‘Drawn by a Lady’

Victorian botanical illustrations by women get their due in museum exhibit

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s newest exhibit,

“Drawn by a Lady: Early Women Illustrators,” celebrates the talent of artists and authors in 19th-century Victorian England who were

disregarded because of their gender.

More than 40 works of early botanical illustration are on view profiling the lives of eight women who defied convention in an era when it was socially unacceptable for them to earn a living.

Denied access to formal education, they used their skills in drawing and painting to make meaningful contributions to the emerging field

of botany. They wrote and illustrated books, sometimes published anonymously, using their husband’s name, or credited simply . . . ”By a Lady.”

“ ‘Drawn by a Lady’ provides a fascinating look at gender issues in the history of science. For Victorian women, illustrating and writing about plants could be a means to both support themselves and to shape botanical knowledge,” said Linda Miller, Maximus Gallery curator, who provided the text for the illustrations.

The exhibition is open through July 2 and is included in museum admission.

Among the drawings in the exhibit is “New Flowerbook,  Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam, The Wondrous Transformation of Caterpillars” by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), an artist and naturalist who led an unusual and adventurous life for a woman born in the seventeenth century. She wrote, illustrated and published three books and was a pioneer of insect biology as well as a businesswoman and entrepreneur financing her own scientific studies.

Born into a prominent family of publishers and artists, she was taught at a young age to paint and engrave.

Widely admired during her lifetime for her contributions to natural science and art in the 19th century, she fell out of favor with scientists who scorned her methods and belittled her discoveries. It was the feminist movement nearly a century later that broadened her appeal by exhibiting her work with other neglected female artists.

Ms. Merian came from the tradition of flower painting, but she was foremost a scientist, one of the first to study metamorphosis and to understand and describe the relationships between animals and their host plants.

“A Selection of Hexandrian Plants” is the work of Priscilla Susan Bury (1799-1872). Growing up in a well-off family, Mrs. Bury was surrounded by the imported plants in her family’s gardens and greenhouses. She was drawn to painting flower portraits as one of the few subjects deemed suitable for a woman.

Encouraged by friends, she produced a book on Hexandrian plants, (those with six stamens belonging to the amaryllis and lily families), and published them under her husband’s name, Mrs. Edward Bury. Her elegant illustrations are decorative and modern in feeling. In the unsigned preface, she wrote in the third person and seemed to distance herself further from ownership. 

She made a disclaimer customary for women of her time as to “having no pretensions whatsoever, either to scientific knowledge or extensive research, but aimed at writing common sense in plain English.”

The accompanying descriptions of each of the plants provide more information than just a description of the flowers, leaves, stems and scent. Some refer to books and articles that discuss the plant or give details on where it came from and how it came into the country. 

Included in the exhibit is “Illustrations of the Natural Order of Plants with Groups and Descriptions” by Elizabeth Twining (1805-1889). Born into the famous tea dynasty, Ms. Twining had the financial security to pursue both her interest in botany and good works. She studied art and drawing as part of her upper-class education and became a skilled portraitist of plants and flowers.

By 1849, she had published two volumes of her ”Natural Order of Plants,” which included 160 hand-colored lithographs in a folio format, based on drawings she made at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew. The lithographed plates depict plants arranged by botanical families placing British plants alongside those from other countries producing novel groupings of plants seldom seen together.

Ms. Twining was also a champion for social reform. A true Victorian lady and practicing member of the Church of England, she believed that her work lay in bridging the gap between rich and poor. She was a strong believer in education for women and its power to span all the social classes. She encouraged the planting of window boxes for institutions such as hospitals and prisons, set up a temperance hall and established a

hospital for the treatment of the poor.

email: mmcmahon@newspress.com

FYI 
“Drawn by a Lady: Early Women Illustrators” is on display through July 2 at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 2559 Puesta Del Sol, Santa Barbara. For more information, visit sbnature.org/drawn.