Three Extraordinary Women: Maria Sibylla Merian, Beatrix Potter, and Margaret Mee

Today I had the pleasure of attending my mother’s AAUW meeting and listening to a talk given by Catherine Alexander, Galleries Director for the Bush Barn Art Center here in Salem. Catherine is also an artist specializing in natural illustration and her talk was about three women who combined art and the natural scientists. These three women, each a pioneer in their own individual ways, made significant strides in the natural sciences, were exquisite illustrators and water colorists, and championed the lands and people that inspired them. It was a fascinating talk and Catherine kindly provided information on how to learn more about each woman.

The first, Maria Sibylla Merian, was born in Germany in 1647. Her father was a renowned Swiss engraver and publisher. Maria was born into a class where everyone worked and contributed to the household. And although her father died when she was three, her step-father, a painter, also encouraged Maria in learning skills that would help make her both an artist and a businesswoman.

Maria, like most women in her time had no formal education. All her knowledge of the natural world came from deep personal observation and she was particularly interested in the life cycle of caterpillars and butterflies. At the time, it was thought insects were spontaneously generated from rotting mud. Maria felt there was something wrong with this theory based on her own observations. And she spent her lifetime investigating metamorphosis and documenting the natural world through her illustrations.

Photo courtesy of A Polar Bear’s Tale

She was remarkable in her personal life as well. After having two daughters with her husband, she moved back to Frankfurt to help her mother settle her stepfather’s estate. Eventually the three generations of women moved into a religious commune leaving her husband behind. After her mother died, she moved to Amsterdam and she and her husband were divorced and she became a single mother and a businesswoman. In 1699, Maria was sponsored by the City of Amsterdam to travel to Surinam in Northern South America where she studied metamorphosis in the Jungle.  When she was there she became very concerned about the treatment of the Amerinds and the black slaves of the colony and tried to bring notice to their conditions.

The New York Times Review of Books has an excellent review of an exhibit of the work of Maria and her two daughters as well as a biography of Maria by Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis.  If you are interested in her artwork, Katharina Schmidt-Loske, a biologist, has compiled some of Maria’s illustrations in Maria Sibylla Merian: Insects of Surinam. The J. Paul Getty Museum website has a slide show of the exhibit mentioned in the review.

Unlike Maria, the second woman is very well know for both her writing and her art Beatrix Potter is famous for her children’s stories starting with The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Like women of her era and class, Beatrix was educated at home by governesses and she and her brother drew and studied the natural world around them. Potter loved the time she spent in the country and her work is based on many of her experiences.  What I didn’t realize is that Beatrix was a very able natural scientist specializing in mushrooms and the like. She, like Maria, spend much of her time in observing fungi in its environment and, like Maria, Beatrix also came to some conclusions regarding the germination of fungi which went against the scientific theories of the time. She eventually wrote a paper on her conclusions but was unable to present it to the Royal Society due to her gender. Her uncle offered to do it for her but she withdrew the paper when she discovered some of her samples had been contaminated. Her theories ware also rejected by the scientific community but were later proven correct.  Also like Maria, Beatrix found a cause to champion in protecting the countryside of the lake district where she had a farm and many of her observations and illustrations were made.

Photo Courtesy of In This Belly of a Whale

Many of Beatrix Potter’s illustrations of mushrooms and the natural world can be found in A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings From the Armitt Collection by Eileen Jay, Mary Nobel, and Anne Stevenson Hobbs. The book is out of print but you may be able to find it at a library and used copies are available on the Internet. If you are interested in reading about the life of Beatrix Potter and her interest in natural science, Linda Lear, a specialist in environmental history and author of Rachel Carson:  Witness for Nature, has written a biography of Potter, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature.

Margaret Mee, like the other two artists, was ahead of her time in many ways. Born in 1909, she was first educated at home and then in a Grammar School. She then went to art school studying illustration and receiving a degree in painting and design. She taught for a while and was sidetracked by travel abroad and war work. After divorcing her first husband, she married an artist and they moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1952 to teach art. In the subsequent years, Margaret became enamored with the Amazon River basin and participated in many explorations in order to draw the flora in its natural habitat, one of the first artists to do so. Many of her subjects had not yet been identified and some of them are only known through her illustrations.

Through her work, Margaret became very concerned about the destruction of the rainforest through encroachment and, most especially, mining.  It seems strange to us today with our greater awareness of the importance of the rainforest, but in the 1960’s such a view was much more radical. She is credited with raising world awareness of the issue of deforestation. I can’t imaging setting out on an Amazonian expedition at age forty-seven, undergoing harsh and dangerous conditions in order to document the wide diversity of species that existed in the area. Margaret did more than imagine, actually accomplishing a great working with botanists to increase scientific knowledge and conservationists to preserve the world she found herself in.

Photo Courtesy of Audubon House

There is no existent biography of Margaret Mee however some of her work has been published in England. These works are currently out of print but copies may be available on the Internet or in libraries. Margaret published her diaries which also contained some of her drawings in an edition titled Margaret Mee’s Amazon: The Diaries of an Artist Explorer. An alternate title is Margaret Mee In Search of Flowers of the Amazon Forest: Diaries of an English Artist Reveal the Beauty of the Vanishing Rainforest. Flowers of the Amazon Rainforest: The Botanical Art of  Margaret Mee by Margaret Ursula Brown  contains some of her drawings and the texts is from her diaries.  The description on Amazon states it is written by Margaret Mee but I am unable to tell if it is exactly the same as the British edition.

Each of these extraordinary women stepped outside of the norms of their eras and followed their passion – giving the world beautiful art work, enlarging the world’s knowledge of science, and championing causes near and dear to their hearts. If you are interested in art, the natural scientists, or women making a difference, exploring the works and life of these three women may well be worth your while.

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