RIP Margaret Stones and Jessica Tcherepnine

This is way of a notice, to those who have not already heard, that we lost two outstanding botanical artists at the turn of the year.

• Margaret Stones AM MBE GM passed away on 26th December in Epworth, Australia
• Jessica Tcherepnine GM died on New Year's Eve in New York.

I'm doing a brief biography/appreciation of Margaret Stones today (see below)  
I'm also in the process of constructing a web page for Margaret Stones for my section about Famous and/or Notable Botanical Artists in the 20th Century - chronicling her artwork and significant contribution to botanical illustration and will be highlighting this at a later date

Tomorrow  I have a post about Jessica Tcherepnine. ​
​

Margaret Stones AM OBE GM (1920-2018)
​

Margaret Stones is a Botanical Artist renowned for her taxonomical accuracy.
Encyclopedia of Australian Science 

Margaret Stones has died, age 98, in Australia, on 26 December 2018. 
She was a very distinguished Australian botanical artist who provided a significant contribution to botanical art and illustration during the 20th century.

Some highlights of career included

• one of the longest serving botanical illustrators for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Working on a freelance basis, she produced over 400 watercolour drawings of plants for Curtis's Botanical Magazine over a period of 25 years between 1958 and 1983 
• participated in some major projects - providing 254 drawings for a six-volume work (1967-78) for The Endemic Flora of Tasmania, and also illustrating the Flora of Louisiana commissioned in 1976 - which grew to over 200 exquisite watercolor drawings
• received very many awards recognising her distinction in her field - including the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and the Order of Australia (AM) plus a Gold and Silver Veitch Memorial Medals and Gold Medals from the Royal Horticultural Society. She also held honorary degrees from both the University of Melbourne and Louisiana State University
• taught and inspired very many botanical artists and talent spotted others - including Pandora Sellars. 

Pandora enjoyed a great relationship with her and shared with me how incredible she was. An inspiration to botanical artists everywhere.
Margaret Best

Margaret Stones - pictured on 13 March 2003 at the "Imperial Honours" Exhibition at Melbourne University, just after her return to Australia | Courtesy of The Australian Women's Register

Early life in Australia

She was born at Colac, Australia, southwest of Melbourne, on August 28, 1920. Her father was a farmer and her early years were blighted by the difficulties associated with the aftermath of the Great War and the Depression.

Her artistic talents were evident early on and her family supported her in her endeavours to train in art. 

She attended Swinburne Girls Junior Technical School (the first Technical School for Girls in Victoria) where she obtained a three-year scholarship to study industrial art at Swinburne Technical College, Victoria (1936-1938). Unfortunately her parents were unable to keep her on for the fourth year which would have given her a Diploma. However she did attend night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School for 18 months during 1940-41, while earning a living doing commercial art jobs during the day.

War work then interrupted her work as a commercial artist and she trained and worked as a nurse during the Second World War.

Her real involvement in botanical illustration began after she contracted pulmonary tuberculosis shortly after she completed her final nursing exams. She was hospitalised and confined to bed for 18 months - at Epworth to begin with and then later at Glenelg Hospital at Box Hill. 

What might seem like a turn for the worse, in fact influenced her career for the rest of her life.

After complaining of going mad with the sheer boredom of enforced recuperation associated with her stay in hospital, she started to spend her time drawing .wild flowers. These were brought to her by her friends - some of whom brought plants to her from the Grampians, a range of mountains in western Victoria. ​

After she recovered from tuberculosis, she was invited to join the University of Melbourne Botany school summer expeditions to the Bogong High Plains, Victoria.

​In 1951 she left Australia for London to further her botanical knowledge. 

A new career and a new life at Kew Gardens

Margaret Stones worked independently, as a freelance botanical illustrator, for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and other botanical institutions for more than 30 years.

She lived right next to Kew, at 1 Bushwood Road, Kew Green, from 1951-2002.  Between 1956 - 1981 she was the Principal contributing artist to Curtis's Botanical Magazine.
​
Latterly her artwork has been seen more often in the exhibitions of botanical art at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. 'Nerine: Nerine bowdenii' Watercolour on vellum (see  below) - was in the "Down Under II: Works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection" at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in Kew Gardens last year. It's also on page 197 of "Contemporary Botanical Artists" - where it's HUGE and fills the complete page!

Illustrating the Floras

Her most important project during the 1960s and 1970s was the illustrations for The Endemic Flora of Tasmania (with botanist Winifred Curtis). For this she produced 

Commenting on Margaret Stones's botanical knowledge and experience, Tasmanian botanist Dr Winifrid Curtis

​ 'recalled that Stones never needed to be told, but invariably knew, which sections to draw in order to facilitate correct taxonomical classification'. 
Dr Winifrid Curtis

A genus has been named after her, Stonesia and a Tasmanian species, Stonesiella.

Margaret Stones and Winifrid Curtis plant hunting in Tasmania (unknown photographer)

From 1975 her work on the Flora of Louisiana project which started as six botanical drawings for Louisiana State University’s bicentennial celebration - and just grew and grew - until it became 200 drawings.

While starting to write my new page about Margaret Stones (1920-2018), I discovered that a new Folio edition of one of her her major projects - Native Flora of Louisiana - Watercolour Drawings of Margaret Stones (Folio Edition) - was published by the Louisiana University Press just two months ago!! In contrast to the original publication - which I have been umming and erring over for a while, this one includes colour reproductions of all the 200+ watercolour drawings for this project.

Cover of the "Native Flora of Louisiana"

Margaret Stones Exhibition at Hill Memorial Library through Feb. 16th pic.twitter.com/JeChiuie

— LSU Libraries (@lsulibraries) 22 January 2013

Exhibitions and Awards

The Louisiana project generated a lot of exhibition and brought wider recognition of her work and contribution to botanical art

Original paintings from the Louisiana Flora were selected for a traveling exhibition which was hosted by numerous venues including

• the Louisiana State Museum (1985)
• the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History (1980)
• the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford;
• the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge;
• the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; and
• the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Her drawings of Louisiana flora remain on display in museums and are also an exceptional resource in the LSU Libraries' Special Collections.

​Further important exhibitions and Awards in her later life - prior to her return to Australia - included

• 1977 - Veitch Silver Medal received from the Royal Horticultural Society, London
• 1977 - Award - Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)
• 1979 - Exhibition: Represented in the iconic Flowers in Art from East and West' Exhibition at the British Museum, London (one of only seven contemporary artists)
• 1980 - Principal exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, USA
• 1985 - Principal exhibition at the Louisiana State Museum, USA
• 1986 - Award: Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc (Hon)) received from Louisiana State University, USA​

• ​1986 - Award: Veitch Gold Medal received from the Royal Horticultural Society, London - awarded to "persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement of the science and practice of horticulture"​
• 1987 - Award: Eloise Payne Luquer Medal received for special artistic achievement in the field of Botany. Awarded by the Garden Club of America

Gold Veitch Memorial Medal - awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society

• ​1988 - Award - Member of the Order of Australia (AM)
• 1989 - Award - Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc (Hon)) received from the University of Melbourne
• 1991 - Exhibition: 90 drawings of Louisiana Flora were exhibited at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

She returned to Australia in 2002.
She passed away at Epworth Hospital in Richmond, Melbourne, age 98, on 26 December 2018. 
(Death Notice)

The cover of my copy of Beauty in Truth: the Botanical Art of Margaret Stones

I've been preparing to develop a page about Margaret Stones for a while (making a note of online links etc).
​
RECOMMENDED:  Last year I purchased a copy of Beauty in Truth - the Botanical Art of Margaret Stones by Irena Zdanowicz.  ​I'd very much recommend this paperback of some 96 pages, published by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1996. It is an excellent book providing a good coverage of both her life, artistic practice and a variety of the work she did for different projects and different people and organisations. The reproduction of her artwork is also very good, although there's always a trade-off with books like this between how many images you can cram in and how big these can be.  

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REFERENCE:

• Illustrations for Curtis Botanical Magazine by Margaret Stones | Prints with a past
• Elsie Margaret Stones and the Flora of Louisiana By Elaine B. Smyth, Interim Assistant Dean of the LSU Libraries, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA | Originally appeared in The Botanical Artist - Volume  16, Issue 3

COLLECTIONS:

• Natural History Museum (Modern Botanical Art Collection) in London
• British Museum (Helianthus Annus; sunflower with detail sketches of its seeds. September 1973 Watercolour over graphite) 
• Botanical paintings by E. Margaret Stones (b.1920) | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 
  
• Ashmolean Museum. Oxford University
• Shirley Sherwood Collection (two works - Viburnum Rhytidophyllum; Nerine Bowdenii)
• Papers of Margaret Stones, 1952 - 1984, MS 7476; Stones, Margaret; National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection. ​
• Tate Archive - Letter to Kenneth Clark.

We are sorry to hear of the passing of Margaret Stones on 26 December, a prolific illustrator for Curtis's Botanical Magazine and other publications between 1951 and 2002, when she returned to her native Australia (photo courtesy of Marilyn Ward) #botanicalart #sciart pic.twitter.com/Bqj5GaXikt

— Kew Gardens LAA Team (@Kew_LAA) 4 January 2019