BOTANICAL ARTIST & EXPLORER
Born into a prosperous family in Hastings in 1830, Marianne was the eldest of three children. Her parents were Janet Marjoriebanks and Frederick North, MP for Hastings and Justice of the Peace. She took up singing and later had painting lessons in watercolour and oils. Painting was an acceptably genteel occupation for a middle-class young woman.
After the death of her mother, and after her father lost his seat in parliament, Marianne travelled a great deal with him, fulfilling one of her mother’s wishes. “My father often took me on expeditions, starting by rail, and then plunging into the forests, over hills and valleys,” she wrote.
He was taken ill on a trip to Switzerland so they returned home. He died soon after. Marianne was not yet 40 and, without other ties, she decided to devote herself to exploring the world and to paint portraits of the plants she encountered.
In the 1870s she visited North America, Brazil, Japan, Borneo and travelled around India on an unlimited rail pass and painted a distant Mount Everest. On the suggestion of Charles Darwin, she then travelled to Australia and New Zealand.
According to her letters, it was while waiting for a train at Shrewsbury station in August 1879 that she decided to write to her friend Joseph Hooker, the Director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to propose the idea of building a gallery there, at her own expense, to display her work. She did, and he said yes. It opened in 1882. And to this day still displays more than 800 of her paintings.
Her last trip was to be to Chile where she was advised that her hunt for the Monkey Puzzle tree may be futile as they were being cut down for railway sleepers. Thankfully the rumour was unfounded.
Marianne retired from travelling at the age of 55 to a cottage in Gloucestershire where she died aged 59.
Notes/links:
https://wonderground.press/artdesign/marianne-north-lady-painter/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_North
Further reading:
‘Recollections of a Happy Life: The Autobiography of Marianne North’ (1892) Cambridge University Press
[by Lynne Howarth-Gladstone]
Research and design by:
Danny Coope / Street of Blue Plaques
https://streetofblueplaques.co.uk/
