Marianne North, an unmarried middle-aged Victorian lady of comfortable means, set off in 1891 on her first expedition to make a pictorial record of the tropical and exotic plants of the world. She produced more than 800 paintings which are housed in a special gallery at Kew. Republished after 85 years this
facsimile of the 6th edition of the Official Guide to the North Gallery remains an instructive publication to the unique collection of paintings by Marianne North and the gallery.The pictures, painted by North in-situ in the countries indicated and arranged by her in the gallery, have hung in the positions she allocated for them since 1882. The guide does not just dwell on the beauty of the paintings; it also relates the plants and landscapes painted to Kew, its great glasshouses and museums. One hundred and thirty seven years on, it is hard to improve on the praise lavished by the Gardener’s Chronicle ‘the skilful dashing works of a true artist, which completely succeeds in showing Nature as she is’ and the words of Sir Joseph Hooker who saw the paintings as a record of plants ‘already disappearing or shortly to disappear before the axe and forest fire’.