Visit The Marianne North Gallery - Victorian Flower Painter at Kew Gardens

After tirelessly travelling the world and painting plants, not only did Marianne North commission and pay for the architect James Ferguson to design the building, but she also supervised its construction and the hanging of her 823 paintings.

In addition, she painted the interior frieze and decorations around the door and ensured that the walls were lined with 246 different types of wooden boards from the wood she collected on her extensive journeying.

Marianne North was born on October 24th 1830, in Hastings. She came from the British landed aristocracy; her father, Frederick North, was MP for Hastings and her mother had inherited a substantial property in Lancashire on the death of her first husband.

The family therefore owned three estates and a town house in London. They divided their time not only between these homes, but also travelled extensively on the continent. In addition, they had a rich social and intellectual life.

Marianne was twenty-four when her mother died and, as the eldest, she took over the running of the household. Once her siblings had left home she devoted herself entirely to her father, accompanying him on trips to Europe, Turkey and Syria.

On these trips, both father and daughter eagerly collected plant species which they painted.

When in 1869 Frederick North died, Marianne North was devastated. He had been her inspiration, encouraging her to paint and draw and introducing her to prominent men of science.

She was thirty-nine years of age and, according to her autobiography, Recollections of a happy life, she was not the slightest bit interested in finding a husband. 

She immediately took herself off on her painting travels, first to Italy and then on to America and Canada. She also travelled to Jamaica, Brazil, Tenerife, Japan, Singapore, Sarawak, Java, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Seychelles and Chile.

Her reputation as a botanical illustrator and collector grew and amongst many of her famous friends and admirers who paid homage, Edward Lear, the painter and poet, wrote that North was “a great draughtswoman and botanist, and …altogetheraciously clever and delightful”. [1]

You can see a slide show of Marianne North's paintings by following this link to the BBC website.

As noted by Susan Morgan [2], Marianne North was unmoved by the indigenous peoples she encountered on her travels, even approving of slavery. To this extent she carried with her the mindset of the typical British Victorian imperialist.

At the same time, Morgan illustrates how North’s ancestral ties to British colonialism and to botany itself resulted in her own dehumanisation, with particular reference to North’s attitude to black Brazilian women and their children.

Marianne North was one of a handful of single, financially independent Victorian women who could have stayed at home and played the role of ‘Angel in the House’. Instead, they travelled the globe, often alone.

Her  motivations for travel were purely to seek out and paint the native flora and fauna of the various countries she visited. Some of the plants she painted were new to science, and as a result one genus and four species were named in her honour.

Aged 55, Marianne North came home for good. She settled in Gloucestershire, designed a beautiful garden, saw her Kew Gardens Gallery through to fruition and wrote her extensive biography. She died on August 30th 1890.

That she achieved her single-minded, painterly and scientific ambitions with breathtaking results is evident to any visitor who walks through the doors of the refurbished Marianne North Gallery at Kew Gardens.

Further Information:

For more information about The Marianne North Gallery at Kew, why not visit their website. It will give more details about this beautiful space, as well as opening times, etc.  You can find their website here.

Sources:

• [1] Quoted by Dea Birkett, “A Victorian Painter of Exotic Flora”, New York Times November 22nd, 1992 and cited in “Introduction” by Susan Morgan to Recollections of a happy life: being the autobiography of Marianne North by Marianne North (The University Press of Virginia, 1993).
• [2] Morgan, op.cit
• [3] "Marianne and Kew" article on Kew Gardens’ Marianne North Gallery website.