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Marjorie Netta Blamey MBE, botanical illustrator, born 13 March 1918; died 8 September 2019
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https://www.calibre.org.uk/page.aspx?sitesectionid=256&sitesectiontitle=Marjorie%20Blamey&fbclid=IwAR13aJXucrP06ZKVrRTEBVc8ehAFjujFtuGxZw8W3ShR0TA57Tc6G5l5elo
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/sep/19/marjorie-blamey-obituary
We never cease to be surprised at the amazing range of talents our Calibre members display and 97-year-old Marjorie Blamey MBE is no exception. Although not formally trained, Marjorie became one of the world’s best known botanical illustrators and her wonderful work can be found in books such as Cassell’s Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe; Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland and Wild Flowers by Colour.
As a child growing up in the Isle of Wight she loved art but when she presented a drawing of autumnal nuts and conkers to her teacher she was told that nobody would be interested in her decorative offerings. Undeterred, in adulthood, she nurtured her creative side through photography and performing; working as a photographer during the day and as an actress at night, following her RADA training.
It was in Epsom in 1941 that she met her husband Philip and after a whirlwind romance of nine months they married. With her new husband away fighting in the army, mustering her customary verve she volunteered as a Red Cross nurse and ambulance driver as well as bringing up two children. When Philip was demobbed in 1946 he decided to pursue a career with a slower pace of life compared to his war experience. He began a two year apprenticeship as a cowman and the family moved to their first Cornish farm. Marjorie continued to take on private photographic work, two more children completed the family and following their move to their second farm, for her own amusement, she began painting the flowers around their land. Her work was spotted at a local art exhibition by botanist looking for an illustrator for his book and quickly she began working on her first professional commissions. These included a book on magnolias by Cornish horticulturist Neil Treseder and Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland from the Collins Pocket Guide series, marking the start of a long-term collaboration with naturalist and author Richard Fitter, and botanist Dr. Christopher Grey-Wilson. Botanists started to send samples from around the world which were stored in various objects around the farmhouse including a number of specimens in the fridge and the bath.
Marjorie was to go on to sell more than a million copies of her wildflower reference books in many languages around the world. In recognition of her work she was awarded an MBE, three gold medals from the Royal Horticultural Society, and two from the Alpine Garden Society. She also became a founder member of Plantlife International, the charity which promotes the preservation of wild plants for the benefit in all.
Although many of Marjorie’s original works are in private collections, the thousands of individual flower paintings used to illustrate her many books are on permanent loan to Plymouth University. This will ensure that her floral legacy will be accessible for students, academics and researchers.
The Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland, Flowers by Colour and Flowers of the Mediterranean, have just been re-printed.
Marjorie still lives in Cornwall taking pleasure in the natural world around her particularly birds which are a lifelong passion. She is an avid reader and enjoys books on travel (she treasures the memories of traversing the world with her husband), classic fiction, biographies, thrillers and history.
She has listened to over 80 books in the last 15 months and says audio books are a lifeline since losing her husband.
And her favourite flower? The primrose, growing wild in the Cornish hedgerows.
FROM Maryrose Peddle via Facebook Message
Hi, this info just received," I have read the notes from Katherine. She has certainly got it right to contact the hamlet where they retired to. I would suggest that she contact Chris Grey-Wilson via The Alpine Garden Society. He kept in touch with Marjorie! Her daughter was called Anne Irons as I remember, I am pretty sure Philip her husband is dead. She was born in 1918 not 1919. It is very unlikely she is still alive I am afraid, although she was a strong minded lady so you never know! Chris and she were very close so he would know most about her after the Daughter. Hope this helps." Maryrose
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/sep/19/marjorie-blamey-obituary
We never cease to be surprised at the amazing range of talents our Calibre members display and 97-year-old Marjorie Blamey MBE is no exception. Although not formally trained, Marjorie became one of the world’s best known botanical illustrators and her wonderful work can be found in books such as Cassell’s Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe; Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland and Wild Flowers by Colour.
As a child growing up in the Isle of Wight she loved art but when she presented a drawing of autumnal nuts and conkers to her teacher she was told that nobody would be interested in her decorative offerings. Undeterred, in adulthood, she nurtured her creative side through photography and performing; working as a photographer during the day and as an actress at night, following her RADA training.
It was in Epsom in 1941 that she met her husband Philip and after a whirlwind romance of nine months they married. With her new husband away fighting in the army, mustering her customary verve she volunteered as a Red Cross nurse and ambulance driver as well as bringing up two children. When Philip was demobbed in 1946 he decided to pursue a career with a slower pace of life compared to his war experience. He began a two year apprenticeship as a cowman and the family moved to their first Cornish farm. Marjorie continued to take on private photographic work, two more children completed the family and following their move to their second farm, for her own amusement, she began painting the flowers around their land. Her work was spotted at a local art exhibition by botanist looking for an illustrator for his book and quickly she began working on her first professional commissions. These included a book on magnolias by Cornish horticulturist Neil Treseder and Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland from the Collins Pocket Guide series, marking the start of a long-term collaboration with naturalist and author Richard Fitter, and botanist Dr. Christopher Grey-Wilson. Botanists started to send samples from around the world which were stored in various objects around the farmhouse including a number of specimens in the fridge and the bath.
Marjorie was to go on to sell more than a million copies of her wildflower reference books in many languages around the world. In recognition of her work she was awarded an MBE, three gold medals from the Royal Horticultural Society, and two from the Alpine Garden Society. She also became a founder member of Plantlife International, the charity which promotes the preservation of wild plants for the benefit in all.
Although many of Marjorie’s original works are in private collections, the thousands of individual flower paintings used to illustrate her many books are on permanent loan to Plymouth University. This will ensure that her floral legacy will be accessible for students, academics and researchers.
The Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland, Flowers by Colour and Flowers of the Mediterranean, have just been re-printed.
Marjorie still lives in Cornwall taking pleasure in the natural world around her particularly birds which are a lifelong passion. She is an avid reader and enjoys books on travel (she treasures the memories of traversing the world with her husband), classic fiction, biographies, thrillers and history.
She has listened to over 80 books in the last 15 months and says audio books are a lifeline since losing her husband.
And her favourite flower? The primrose, growing wild in the Cornish hedgerows.
FROM Maryrose Peddle via Facebook Message
Hi, this info just received," I have read the notes from Katherine. She has certainly got it right to contact the hamlet where they retired to. I would suggest that she contact Chris Grey-Wilson via The Alpine Garden Society. He kept in touch with Marjorie! Her daughter was called Anne Irons as I remember, I am pretty sure Philip her husband is dead. She was born in 1918 not 1919. It is very unlikely she is still alive I am afraid, although she was a strong minded lady so you never know! Chris and she were very close so he would know most about her after the Daughter. Hope this helps." Maryrose
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/sep/19/marjorie-blamey-obituary
Marjorie Blamey, who has died aged 101, was Britain’s most prolific illustrator of wild flowers. She contributed all the colour illustrations, amounting to many thousands of paintings, for a succession of distinguished field guides, beginning with Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe in 1974.
It was followed by
Her favourite flower, one she painted many times, was the Cornish primrose: “It’s such a lovely simple flower. I am not fond of the great big exotic things. They don’t thrill me like wild flowers do.”
Marjorie’s watercolour illustrations opened people’s eyes to the beauty of wild flowers at home and throughout Europe, including the Mediterranean islands. Her pictures captured the essence of a plant in a way that photography rarely can, and made identification much easier than was previously the case. Her field guides became the mainstay of green tours throughout Europe. Indeed, without them, European wild flowers might well have remained the province of a handful of dedicated botanists.
Her output was extraordinary, all the more so for her lack of formal botanical training. Marjorie and her husband Philip travelled in a motor caravan that doubled as her studio. She painted flowers they had gathered during the day and preserved in boxes lined with damp paper to keep them fresh. She began painting as soon as it was light, sometimes as early as 4am, and usually finished a dozen paintings before lunch.
A network of botanists from across Europe would also send her specimens packed in special aluminium boxes. At home her fridge – and sometimes the bath, too – was often packed with plants waiting to be painted. She needed to work quickly, for, as she pointed out, “When you have 500 flowers you have to do 20 a day before they wilt. Luckily both speed and accuracy come naturally to me.”
Towards the end of her career, Marjorie owned a library of 10,000 flower paintings from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and could call up almost any wild flower in Europe from stock. No other botanical illustrator has come close to her output. She won several gold medals for her work from the Royal Horticultural Society and the Alpine Garden Society, and in 2007 was appointed MBE.
She was born to British parents in Talawakelle, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where her father, Arthur Day, worked as a doctor. Her mother, Janette Newton-Baker, was a nurse.
Her acting career came to an abrupt halt at the outbreak of the second world war, when she joined the Ambulance Brigade and trained as a nurse. She met her future husband, Philip Blamey, then serving as a junior officer in the Staffordshire Regiment, while tobogganing at midnight on the Epsom Downs. They married in August 1941.
After the war the couple trained to be a “cowman and wife”. Together with their three children (a fourth was born in 1953), they moved to Cornwall, where they ran a dairy farm near Liskeard. It was not until she was in her late 40s that Marjorie rediscovered her childhood love of flower painting. A friend spotted her pictures of local wild flowers and arranged for them to be displayed at the county flower show. They were seen by the horticulturalist Neil Treseder, who persuaded her to illustrate his book on magnolias.
That in turn led to the commission that changed her life: an invitation from Collins to illustrate the new field guide to wild flowers, for which she teamed up with the naturalist Richard Fitter. The work took her two years to complete, but the book, published in 1974, became a bestseller and was translated into 14 European languages. “My husband and I pinched ourselves,”recalled Marjorie. “It was not planned. It just fell into our lap.”
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• Marjorie Netta Blamey, botanical illustrator, born ; died 8 September 2019
Marjorie Blamey, who has died aged 101, was Britain’s most prolific illustrator of wild flowers. She contributed all the colour illustrations, amounting to many thousands of paintings, for a succession of distinguished field guides, beginning with Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe in 1974.
It was followed by
Her favourite flower, one she painted many times, was the Cornish primrose: “It’s such a lovely simple flower. I am not fond of the great big exotic things. They don’t thrill me like wild flowers do.”
Marjorie’s watercolour illustrations opened people’s eyes to the beauty of wild flowers at home and throughout Europe, including the Mediterranean islands. Her pictures captured the essence of a plant in a way that photography rarely can, and made identification much easier than was previously the case. Her field guides became the mainstay of green tours throughout Europe. Indeed, without them, European wild flowers might well have remained the province of a handful of dedicated botanists.
Her output was extraordinary, all the more so for her lack of formal botanical training. Marjorie and her husband Philip travelled in a motor caravan that doubled as her studio. She painted flowers they had gathered during the day and preserved in boxes lined with damp paper to keep them fresh. She began painting as soon as it was light, sometimes as early as 4am, and usually finished a dozen paintings before lunch.
A network of botanists from across Europe would also send her specimens packed in special aluminium boxes. At home her fridge – and sometimes the bath, too – was often packed with plants waiting to be painted. She needed to work quickly, for, as she pointed out, “When you have 500 flowers you have to do 20 a day before they wilt. Luckily both speed and accuracy come naturally to me.”
Towards the end of her career, Marjorie owned a library of 10,000 flower paintings from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and could call up almost any wild flower in Europe from stock. No other botanical illustrator has come close to her output. She won several gold medals for her work from the Royal Horticultural Society and the Alpine Garden Society, and in 2007 was appointed MBE.
She was born to British parents in Talawakelle, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where her father, Arthur Day, worked as a doctor. Her mother, Janette Newton-Baker, was a nurse.
Her acting career came to an abrupt halt at the outbreak of the second world war, when she joined the Ambulance Brigade and trained as a nurse. She met her future husband, Philip Blamey, then serving as a junior officer in the Staffordshire Regiment, while tobogganing at midnight on the Epsom Downs. They married in August 1941.
After the war the couple trained to be a “cowman and wife”. Together with their three children (a fourth was born in 1953), they moved to Cornwall, where they ran a dairy farm near Liskeard. It was not until she was in her late 40s that Marjorie rediscovered her childhood love of flower painting. A friend spotted her pictures of local wild flowers and arranged for them to be displayed at the county flower show. They were seen by the horticulturalist Neil Treseder, who persuaded her to illustrate his book on magnolias.
That in turn led to the commission that changed her life: an invitation from Collins to illustrate the new field guide to wild flowers, for which she teamed up with the naturalist Richard Fitter. The work took her two years to complete, but the book, published in 1974, became a bestseller and was translated into 14 European languages. “My husband and I pinched ourselves,”recalled Marjorie. “It was not planned. It just fell into our lap.”
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• Marjorie Netta Blamey, botanical illustrator, born ; died 8 September 2019
Timeline
13 March 1918: Marjorie Blamey born in Talawakelle, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) - Her British parents were Arthur Day (father) who worked as a doctor in Ceylon and her mother, Janette Newton-Baker, who was a nurse.
1921 - The family returned to the UK in 1921. They settled in Sandown on the Isle of Wight. Marjorie and her brother, Dick, enjoyed the outdoor life, developing an early love of nature and enjoyed drawing and painting flowers.
1929 - The family moved to Epsom.
Marjorie had a talent for theatricals and won a place at a local acting school, attending once a week while sharing a governess for the rest of her schooling.
1934 - she won a scholarship to attend Rada and took part in several films at the Elstree Studios. For a while she also took up photography, winning competitions and exhibiting at the London Salon of Photography.
1939 - acting stopped on the outbreak of WW2 and instead Marjorie joined the Ambulance Brigade and trained as a nurse.
August 1941 - Marjorie married Philip Blamey, who was serving as a junior officer in the Staffordshire Regiment. They had met while tobogganing at midnight on the Epsom Downs.
Post-war / 1950s - The couple trained to be a “cowman and wife” and had three children (with the last born in 1953) and moved to Cornwall, where they ran a dairy farm near Liskeard.
1921 - The family returned to the UK in 1921. They settled in Sandown on the Isle of Wight. Marjorie and her brother, Dick, enjoyed the outdoor life, developing an early love of nature and enjoyed drawing and painting flowers.
1929 - The family moved to Epsom.
Marjorie had a talent for theatricals and won a place at a local acting school, attending once a week while sharing a governess for the rest of her schooling.
1934 - she won a scholarship to attend Rada and took part in several films at the Elstree Studios. For a while she also took up photography, winning competitions and exhibiting at the London Salon of Photography.
1939 - acting stopped on the outbreak of WW2 and instead Marjorie joined the Ambulance Brigade and trained as a nurse.
August 1941 - Marjorie married Philip Blamey, who was serving as a junior officer in the Staffordshire Regiment. They had met while tobogganing at midnight on the Epsom Downs.
Post-war / 1950s - The couple trained to be a “cowman and wife” and had three children (with the last born in 1953) and moved to Cornwall, where they ran a dairy farm near Liskeard.
“My husband and I pinched ourselves. It was not planned. It just fell into our lap.”
Marjorie Blamey talking about how she got into illustrating books about wild flowers
Mid 50s - Marjorie rediscovered her childhood love of flower painting in her late 40s.
A friend spotted her pictures of local wild flowers and arranged for them to be displayed at the county flower show. They were seen by the horticulturalist Neil Treseder, who persuaded her to illustrate his book on magnolias. That in turn led to the commission that changed her life: an invitation from Collins to illustrate the new field guide to wild flowers, for which she teamed up with the naturalist Richard Fitter. The work took her two years to complete, but the book, published in 1974, became a bestseller and was translated into 14 European languages.
1974 - Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe in 1974 was published, became a bestseller and was translated into 14 European languages.
At that point Marjorie had never been abroad. In the following years she took up botanical illustration full-time, selling the farm to concentrate on her painting while Philip organised her growing library of pictures.
A friend spotted her pictures of local wild flowers and arranged for them to be displayed at the county flower show. They were seen by the horticulturalist Neil Treseder, who persuaded her to illustrate his book on magnolias. That in turn led to the commission that changed her life: an invitation from Collins to illustrate the new field guide to wild flowers, for which she teamed up with the naturalist Richard Fitter. The work took her two years to complete, but the book, published in 1974, became a bestseller and was translated into 14 European languages.
1974 - Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe in 1974 was published, became a bestseller and was translated into 14 European languages.
At that point Marjorie had never been abroad. In the following years she took up botanical illustration full-time, selling the farm to concentrate on her painting while Philip organised her growing library of pictures.
The Illustrated Flora of Britain and Northern Europe
by Richard Fitter, Fitter and illustrated by Marjorie Blamey
by Richard Fitter, Fitter and illustrated by Marjorie Blamey
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I bought a copy of this book on discovering her work - just before she died.
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1978 - BBC filmed a documentary about their lives for The World About Us series called Wild Flower Safari.
1979 - Alpine Flowers
1989 - The large-format Illustrated Flora of Britain and Northern Europe (1989) was published. This was written with her close friend Christopher Grey-Wilson and Marjorie provided the 2,400 botanical illustrations.
1993 - Mediterranean Wild Flowers
2003 - a revised version of the first book was published as Cassell’s Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe and was selected as book of the year by Natural World magazine.
Marjorie herself wrote
- a series of books on flower painting,
- illustrated nature books for the children’s author David Stephen.
Marjorie was modest about her gifts. But when asked about her key strengths as a botanical artist, she said: “I make flowers look alive, not like pressed dead things.”
Travelling and painting for a succession of books followed, either in collaboration with Fitter and his son Alastair, or with her botanical mentor, Grey-Wilson.
age 85 - completed her last field guide, Wild flowers of Britain and Ireland, at the age of 85.
2014: Philip Blamey died
8 September 2019 - Marjorie Netta Blamey MBE, botanical illustrator age 101 (born 13 March 1918) died.
She is survived by their two sons and two daughters.
botanists seem to know the best guides by theirs author(s) rather than their title. Hence it's always Rose and not The Wild Flower Key and indeed it's always Fitter, Fitter and Blamey and not Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe. Perhaps a testament to their quality.
comment on the obituary for Marjorie Blamey in The Guardian