Marion Satterlee
Marion Satterlee (8 January 1868 – 9 June 1965)[1] was an American botanical artist who in 1893 illustrated the first field guide to North American wildflowers.
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Artwork
[edit]Marion Satterlee was a friend of the naturalist and author Frances Theodora Parsons, and their walks together inspired Parsons to sit down and write her long-meditated first book, How to Know the Wild Flowers (1893).[2][3] At Parsons' insistence, Satterlee illustrated both this book and its sequel, How to Know the Ferns (1899).[4] For How to Know the Wild Flowers—which was the first field guide to North American wildflowers and a great popular success that stayed in print into the 1940s[5]—she created 110 full-page black-and-white illustrations, which were complemented by color plates by Elsie Louise Shaw.[2] The writer and New Yorker editor Katharine Sergeant Angell White, writing many decades later, termed the book a classic and remarked on the excellence of Satterlee's line drawings.[6]
For How to Know the Ferns, Satterlee and a second artist, Alice Josephine Smith, created 42 full-page plates and over two dozen smaller black-and-white illustrations from pen drawings. (The illustrations include initials, either a.j.s or MS, to identify the artist of each drawing.) Satterlee also provided a description of the Woodwardia ferns.[7]
Personal history
[edit]Satterlee lived in New York City, and she apparently took some courses in plant illustration after Parsons asked her to illustrate How to Know the Wild Flowers.[3] Other information about her origins and upbringing is scarce. Given the social circles she moved in as a friend of Parsons, she may be the Marion Satterlee who was a sister of lawyer and government official Herbert L. Satterlee.[8] If so, her parents were George Bowen Satterlee and Sarah (Wilcox) Satterlee.
References
[edit]- ^ A Poland, Maine news circular lists her as a visitor in the summer of 1905. See The Hilltop, vol. 12, no. 1, July 2, 1905.
- ^ a b Frances Theodora Parsons (Mrs. Wm Starr Dana), Sierra College Natural History Museum, Retrieved 14 August 2015
- ^ a b Finger, Mary. "Who Is Mrs. William Starr Dana?". On the Fringe (Journal of the Native Plant Society of Northeastern Ohio), vol. 23, no. 3 (December 2005), pp. 16–18.
- ^ "Frances Theodora Parsons (a.k.a., Mrs. William Starr Dana)". Cassandra Considers All Things Bright and Beautiful (blog), Sept. 8, 2010. Accessed Dec. 4, 2015.
- ^ Raymo, Chet. The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe. New York: Walker & Co., 2003.
- ^ White, Katharine. Onward and Upward in the Garden. New York: New York Review of Books, 1979
- ^ Parsons, Frances Theodora. Preface to How to Know the Ferns. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907.
- ^ "What Is Doing in Society". New York Times, Nov. 15, 1900.
External links
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Works related to Marion Satterlee at Wikisource
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