Marianne North: A Victorian Painter for the 21st Century

This lavishly-illustrated book re-assesses the work of the nineteenth-century botanical painter Marianne North (1830-1890) and the purpose-built gallery that houses her paintings at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Lynne Howarth-Gladston, a trained botanical illustrator and scholar, re-examines North’s working methods, which extend beyond those of conventional botanical illustration, and discusses North’s painterly techniques, in addition to her use of photography as a possible aid to her extraordinarily prolific output. Marianne North: A Victorian Painter for the 21st Century situates North both as an unconventional botanical painter and as a technically progressive artist who melded differing stylistic approaches, techniques and media from both scientific and aesthetic perspectives. The study presents North as a progressive, multi-faceted individual who was rooted in the complex circumstances of her own time. Yet it also reveals how her legacy continues to resonate with the concerns of the present day, such as contemporary intersections between art and science, artistic uses of multi-media, feminism, and climate change. Drawing on North’s travel writing as well as her visual record, the book offers a unique view of one of the most intriguing figures in the history of botanical art.

Dr Lynne Howarth-Gladston is a curator, writer and artist who is trained in art and design. She was also an expert contributor to the BBC4 documentary, Kew’s Forgotten Queen: The Life of Marianne North (2016).