One of the projects most exciting discoveries was that the first painting one of the conservators worked on turned out to have another painting on the reverse which has been unseen for 120 years.

Marianne North

Marianne North was a remarkable Victorian artist who travelled the globe to satisfy her passion for recording the world’s flora with her paintbrush. The result of these epic journeys can be seen in Kew's Marianne North Gallery, where tier upon tier of brightly coloured paintings of flowers, landscapes, animals and birds are arranged. There are 832 paintings, all completed in thirteen years of travel round the world.

In 1871 Marianne, aged 40, began her astonishing series of trips around the world. She was inspired by earlier travels with her father and the exotic plant collections she saw at Kew. Her words on embarking on this new period in her life sum up her excitement:  "I had long dreamed of going to some tropical country to paint its peculiar vegetation on the spot in natural abundant luxuriance..."

Between 1871 and 1885 Marianne North visited America, Canada, Jamaica, Brazil, Tenerife, Japan, Singapore, Sarawak, Java, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Seychelles and Chile.

Marianne was rare among women of this period – travelling unaccompanied and visiting areas virtually unknown to many Europeans. Marianne was at her happiest when discovering plants and painting and she spent nearly all her time abroad in the wild, surrounded by the habitats and plants she longed to capture in oil paint.

Exhausted from her extensive travels and failing health, Marianne North retired to Gloucestershire where she died on 30th August 1890. Her legacy lives on in the Gallery, providing Kew visitors with the chance to explore the amazing 'snapshot in time' represented by her paintings.

Marianne's travel writings are still being reprinted but you may read Recollections of a Happy Life online.

A new book about North by Michelle Payne, Marianne North: A Very Intrepid Painter, has been published by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Fully illustrated and including a stunning eight-page fold-out, the book provides an overview of North's spirited work, life, and travels. 
Marianne North: A Very Intrepid Painter by Michelle Payne

Images are courtesy of  Royal Botanic Garden,  Kew

(1) North's paintings in the Gallery named for her.

(2) Conservator restoring a painting.

(3) Cultivated Flowers, painted in Jamaica

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