Mary Emily Eaton ( English Mary Emily Eaton , 1873-1961) - English artist, botanical illustrator . Engaged in painting porcelain; in the 1910s she left for the USA, where for a long time she worked as a full-time artist in the botanical garden. She is best known as the author of most images of cacti in the famous four-volume edition of Britton and Rose, The Cactaceae (1919-1923); illustrated also various periodicals. Painted mostly in watercolor .
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Content
Friends described Mary Eaton as “very English, very reserved and proper” [1] .
Biography
Study, work in England
Biographical information regarding Mary Emily Eaton is very stingy [1] . It is known that she was born on November 27, 1873 in Southwest England , in the small town of of Gloucestershire county [1] [2] .
She studied at several private schools in London , then in Taunton ( Somerset County , South West England ) at the local School of Arts (now ), after which she received two professional certificates: Art Class Tea Certificate and Art Master's Certificate . Later, Mary Emily continued her art education in London - at the Royal College of Art and the [2] [~ 1] .
For some time, Eaton was engaged in painting porcelain , working as an artist in an enterprise producing the famous Worcester porcelain . In 1909, she left for Jamaica [2] to visit her brother, who served as manager of a banana plantation [1] , and his sister. Here she began to draw butterflies , paying special attention to details [2] . Here she met the director of the National Geographic Society - a large American scientific and educational organization - who became interested in her work and promised to help her get a job [1] . In June 1911, she moved to the United States [2] .
Work in the USA
In 1914, Eaton began working in the New York Botanical Garden as a full-time artist [1] . Here she painted plants for botanical scientists and plant growers, was engaged in documenting individual plants, such as Coleus and Hemerocallis , and kept records of some rare species [1] . In addition, some of her works were published in the materials [2] .
At the same time, she illustrated the magazine for many years, a publication that described crop plants . Starting from the first issue, published in 1916, she participated in the preparation of approximately one hundred issues of this journal and was the author of the vast majority of botanical illustrations [2] [1] ; the total number of sheets with illustrations made by her for this magazine was more than six hundred [4] . A large number of images of flowering wild plants was created by her for the National Geographic Magazine (now National Geographic ); these illustrations were later compiled in The Book of Wildflowers , published by the magazine in 1924 [1] .
Eton achieved the greatest success in her activities as a botanical illustrator, drawing cacti . Eton's invitation to work in the Botanical Gardens in New York was most likely related to the preparation for publication of a monograph by Nathaniel Britton and Joseph Rose on cacti, in which it was planned to conduct a significant audit of this family. Work related to the monograph began back in 1904 and included the development of a research program and sample collection. In 1911, questions of the publication of the monograph went into serious practicality. The publication became a joint product of the New York Botanical Garden and two metropolitan organizations - the National Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Institute . Collectors traveled all over America, and the samples they collected were studied in all three participating organizations. Nathaniel Britton, director of the New York Botanical Garden, involved Eaton in this work. Signs that she painted her illustrations from living specimens can be seen in some of the images she made - there are pencil marks where and by whom this sample was collected. In her work, she was quick and accurate, managing to draw a sample, according to an eyewitness, “a little longer than in one morning” [1] .
The color illustrations prepared by Eton for the monograph were placed 2–4 on one sheet (plate), and multicolor printing was used for publication. Four volumes of the monograph , published between 1919 and 1923, contained about 140 sheets with color illustrations [1] , most of which was done by Eaton; she also became the author of most black and white drawings of cacti [2] . The Cactaceae is still considered a reference publication in its field, new scientific works of a similar genre are compared with this monograph [1] .
In January 1932, during the Great Depression , Eaton lost her place in the New York Botanical Garden. It is known that for a long time she tried to find a job again [1] . In 1947, she returned to her homeland. Mary Emily Eaton died on August 4, 1961 in in the county of Somerset in South West England [2] .
Creative heritage
Eaton is called one of the outstanding botanical illustrators [2] , her creative heritage is “significant and impressive” [1] , and her drawings are “outstanding” and “exquisite” [1] . Her masterful use of chiaroscuro gave her illustrations an amazing depth [2] . Especially well she managed images of various types of prickly pear [1] .
Most of the cactus images made by Eaton for The Cactaceae are in Washington , DC , at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History [1] ; about three hundred watercolors were scanned with high resolution and is now available for free viewing on the official website of the institute [5] . About six hundred watercolors made by Eaton for National Geographic Magazine are part of the permanent collection of the US National Geographic Society [2] ; two thirds of them have not been published [1] . Some of her works are kept in the collection of the New York Botanical Garden [2] and at , which is part of Carnegie Mellon University [2] .
Many of Eaton’s drawings are kept in the Museum of Natural History in London (formerly the British Museum of Natural History), including those that participated in exhibitions of the Royal Horticultural Society and for which she received two Grenfell medals from this society - silver in 1922 and gold in 1950 [1] .
Comments
- ↑ The source may have a mistake, since the Chelsea Polytechnic College, which arose in 1895, was called South-Western Polytechnic ("South-West Polytechnic College"), only in 1922 it was renamed Chelsea Polytechnic [3] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Angell, 2009 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Mary Emily Eaton : [ arch. 02/07/2018 ]: [ eng. ] . - Society for Louisiana Irises. - Date of appeal: 05/23/2018.
- ↑ Chelsea Polytechnic, 1922-1956 : [ arch. 05/18/2017 ]: [ eng. ] . - King's College London. - Date of appeal: 05/23/2018.
- ↑ Holmgren, 1980 .
- ↑ Botanical illustrations of Mary Emily Eaton on the Smithsonian Institution website (for search, enter Eaton, Mary Emily in the Artist field)
Literature
- Holmgren NH Indices to the species illustrated in Addisonia : [ eng. ] // : Journal. - 1980. - Vol. 32 (July). - P. 421-436. - DOI : 10.1007 / BF02805536 .
- Kramer J. Women of Flowers: A Tribute to Victorian Women Illustrators: [ eng. ] . - New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1996 .-- ISBN 1-55670-497-6 .
Links
- Angell B. Mary Emily Eaton and Her Cactaceae Paintings : [ arch. 03/05/2017 ]: [ eng. ] . - ASBA - The American Society of Botanical Artists. - Date of appeal: 05/23/2018. (Originally appeared in The Botanical Artist - Volume 15, Issue 3 (September 2009).)