Marianne North - Abundant Beauty. The Adventurous Travels of Marianne North, Botanical Artist

ABUNDANT BEAUTY

The Adventurous Travels of
MARIANNE NORTH
Botanical Artist

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INTRODUCTION BY LAURA PONSONBY

ABUNDANT
BEAUTY

Copyright 2010 by Greystone Books
Introduction 2010 by Laura Ponsonby
First U.S. edition 2011

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These are excerpts from Recollections of a Happy Life:
Being the Autobiography of Marianne North, edited by her sister Mrs. John Addington Symonds, in three volumes; first published in New York and London by MacMillan and Co., 1894.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
North, Marianne, 1830-1890
Abundant beauty : the adventurous travels of Marianne North, botanical artist.

ISBN 978-1-55365-541-1

1. North, Marianne, 1830-1890Travel. 2. Botanical artistsEnglandBiography. I. Title.
QK31.N67A3 2010 580.92 C2009-907057-X

Cover and text design by Heather Pringle
Maps by Eric Leinberger
Cover image RBGKew
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Printed on acid-free, FSC-certified paper that is forest friendly (100% post-consumer recycled paper) and has been processed chlorine free

Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

CONTENTS

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by Laura Ponsonby

by Mrs. John Addington Symonds

M ARIANNE NORTH was an accomplished painter, knowledgeable botanist, enthusiastic traveller, and prolific diarist. Selected from three volumesincluding writing about travels in almost thirty countriesthe excerpts from Norths diaries in this edition cover six countries on five continents.

A marker like the one above indicates an abridgement to the text. Each chapter may not begin where Marianne North started writing or end at the close of her own diary entry. But each chapter will provide an understanding of her experiences and perhaps even make you feel that you are along with her, riding in the jampany or on the back of a mule, or walking parasol and painting easel in handthrough the lush jungle or the dense rainforest, in search of new subjects for her canvas.

Although she was more adventurous and expressive than most, Marianne North was very much a citizen of her own time and placea late-nineteenth-century privileged British woman, with many of the common attitudes and ways of thinking of the time. Some of these attitudesespecially in matters of race and indigenous culturewould not be acceptable today. But readers will agree that, for the most part, Marianne North approached the world in all of its diversity with an open and intelligent mind, an engaging curiosity, and a generous spirit.

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by Laura Ponsonby

M ARIANNE NORTH was a remarkable Victorian artist who travelled around the world to satisfy her passion for painting plants. At a time when women rarely travelled alone, many of Norths expeditions to remote areas of the globe were fraught with danger, but also with adventure and opportunity. The artistic results of these epic journeys can be seen in the Marianne North Gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which was designed by her friend James Fergusson and generously donated by the artist herself. Entering the gallery for the first time and seeing tier upon tier of brilliantly coloured oil paintings of plants, landscapes, birds, and animals is a breathtaking experience. The collection includes more than eight hundred paintings, completed in less than thirteen years of travel, and under them a dado made of 246 types of exotic woods collected by North. The gallery is believed to hold the only permanent solo exhibition by a woman painter in Britain and is certainly one of Kews greatest treasures.

MARIANNE NORTH WAS BORN IN Hastings, Sussex, in 1830, the elder daughter of Janet North and Frederick North, Liberal Member of Parliament for Hastings. She spent much of her youth travelling in England and Europe, and although she took a sketchbook, as was customary for young Victorian women travellers, music was her mania. It was only when her beautiful contralto voice deserted her that she took up painting in earnest, first in watercolour and later in oils.

Through her fathers connections, North knew many people who encouraged and supported her work. She received some tuition from the Dutch flower artist Magdalen von Fowinkel, and from Valentine Bartholomew, flower painter to Queen Victoria. In 1867, Robert Dowling, an Australian artist who lived in London, introduced North to oil paints. It was an event that changed her life, so that painting became, in her words, a drug like dram-drinking, almost impossible to leave off once it gets possession of one. Edward Lear, the nonsense writer and brilliant artist, was also a great friend and an admirer of her colourful paintings.

When North was twenty-four, her mother died and on her death bed made her daughter promise never to leave her father. True to her vow, North and her father continued travelling to Egypt, Syria, and various European countries. It was on excursions to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, that she became aware of glorious tropical flora. Sir William Hooker, the director, once gave North a beautiful hanging bunch of flowers of Amherstia nobilis, a tree from Burma, which made her long to visit the tropics.

Frederick Norths death in 1869 had a devastating effect on his elder daughter; the one idol and friend of her life had gone. However, this meant that North was at last free to visit the tropics. She once wrote that she was a very wild bird and liked liberty. At the age of forty she began her astonishing series of trips around the world. Between 1871 and 1885, she visited the United States, Canada, Jamaica, Brazil, Tenerife, Japan, Singapore, Sarawak (Borneo), Java, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Seychelles, and Chile. Her aim was to paint plants in their habitats and to educate people on the sources of certain products.

North was a great networker. She always made certain to obtain plenty of letters of introduction before she set off on her travels. Fortunately, her father had known many distinguished scientists, botanists, artists, writers, and politicians who were able to put her in touch with people all over the world. She never cared for staying in government residences, preferring less grand accommodationfriends or acquaintances homes, boarding houses, inns, hotels, or primitive huts. In Sarawak she was a guest of Rajah and Rani Brooke in their official residence; the rani found dear Miss North exhausting but nevertheless enjoyed her visit. In Java, North had a big letter from the Governor General asking all officials, both native and Dutch, to feed and lodge her and pass her on to wherever she wanted to go.