Many of her paintings are at the British Museum of Natural History; her water colours are also part of the permanent collections of the National Geographic Society, The New York Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution.
Declared by United Nations in 1977, International Women's Day falls on Sunday, 8th March this year. A good time to look at the work of English botanical artist par excellence Mary Emily Eaton, active in the early 20th century.
She was born 27th November 1873 in Coleford, Gloucestershire and attended private schools in London. Mary's formal education in art commenced at the Taunton School of Art. She also took classes at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, and the Chelsea Polytechnic.
Working as a painter of Worcester porcelain provided her with a living but in 1909, she travelled to Jamaica, staying for two years with her brother, a banana plantation manager, and his wife. It was there she began painting the island's spectacular butterflies and moths.
In June 1911 she left for New York City where her abilities as an accurate illustrator attracted the attention of the director of the New York Botanical Garden. She was employed there for the next quarter century, achieving well-deserved fame for her numerous botanical illustrations.
She was said to be a quick and accurate, painting a plant in little more than a morning. She needed to be. Among other duties, as principal illustrator of the 100 issues of the Botanical Garden's journal Addisonia, she painted over three-quarters of the 800 plates.
Mary Eaton remains best known for illustrating Britton & Rose's four volume The Cactaceae. First published between 1919 and 1923, it featured 383 full-colour illustrations and over 300 black-and-white line drawings.
What is even more remarkable beyond her workload, is the beauty and accuracy of her illustrations. Other botanical artists acknowledge that cacti are amongst the hardest to render, yet Mary Eaton produced hundreds in half a decade. The 1963 Dover reprint of the 1937 edition, four volumes in two, lacks the colour art, but remains for the cacti aficionado, a much referred to work.
She still found time to produce illustrations appearing in the National Geographic magazine, and for their 1924 The Book of Wildflowers. Four years later, in 1928, she illustrated the Field Book of Common Gilled Mushrooms.
The Great Depression brought suffering to millions. One of them was Mary Eaton. Her employer, the New York Botanical Garden, found it necessary to let her go in January 1932. She struggled to support herself but by 1947 returned to England. She had been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Grenfell Medal in 1922 and this was repeated in 1950.
Mary Eaton died quietly, almost unnoticed on 4th August 1961 in Cossington, Somerset, in Britain's West Country. Although described by a friends as very English, very reserved and proper, in fact we know more about her illustrations than the woman herself.
Many of her paintings are at the British Museum of Natural History; her water colours are also part of the permanent collections of the National Geographic Society, The New York Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution.
Many of these are available online as reproductions and prints of North American flowers including her fabulous cacti illustrations.
Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
