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Details
DEBORAH GRISCOM PASSMORE (d. 1911)
An album of original watercolour drawings on paper of Lilies and other flowers. [Washington, D.C.: c. 1880]. Folio (433 x 312mm). 49 leaves of watercolours of 48 species, 44 of the leaves preceded by 'illuminated' caption-leaves bearing the botanic binomials, with 6 'illuminated' leaves bearing suitably botanic biblical quotes. Extra-illustrated with a portrait photograph of Miss Passmore, a newspaper obituary, and a typed letter of introduction from the Bureau of Agriculture to Herbert Putnam of the Library of Congress, all mounted on the front free-endpapers. Contemporary brown morocco by Pawson & Nicholson of Philadelphia, covers with elaborate border tooled in gilt and blind, the spine in six compartments with raised bands, repeat decorative tooling in gilt and blind, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges. Provenance: Miss Passmore (by descent to her niece:); Mrs. Mary R. Sumner (see TLS to Putnam).
A VERY FINE ALBUM OF BOTANICAL WATERCOLOURS BY THE NOTED AMERICAN BOTANICAL ARTIST. Miss Passmore trained under Thomas Moran and others at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and came to specialise in botanical watercolours of fruit and flowers (exhibiting at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1892), taught painting in Washington, and was appointed to the division of pomology in the Department of Agriculture in August 1892. She remained their "leading water-color artist" (A.Taylor in accompanying TLS) and reached the position where "in fruits she was unquestionably the leading artist in this country", and continued to work up until shortly before her death on 3 January 1911.
The present album illustrates Miss Passmore's "off-duty" work: she painted fruit to earn a living, and she painted lilies for pleasure. Her work on lilies was clearly known and admired during her lifetime, as the inserted obituary notice writes of the present album as "one of her greatest achievements". A close examination of the flowers in the album reveals that Miss Passmore was undoubtedly well aware of the various family groupings of species according to the Linnean system (her professional life allied with the correct use of the binomial nomenclature prove this). Depite this, she has chosen to interpret 'Lilies' in its widest sense, guided by the common names then current, so although the album includes 14 examples of the genus Lilium, it also includes Water-Lilies (5 different Nymphaea and 2 drawings of the giant Victoria regia), the Barbados lily and 9 other "Amaryllis" (more correctly Hippeastrum or Sprekelia), 2 Day-lilies (Hemerocallis), a Lily-of-the-Valley (Convallaria majalis), a Calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica) and a Plantain Lily (Hosta plantaginea). The drawings, whilst absolutely accurate in botanical terms, have a freedom that is not be found in Miss Passmore's paintings of fruit. This freedom extends to the whole album: the captions are treated as opportunites to experiment with letter-forms and their decoration. The results range from relatively restrained letters with added shadows to a Doyle-esque lakeland scene with fairies or water-nymphs forming the letters through the various poses of their bodies and wings.
An album of original watercolour drawings on paper of Lilies and other flowers. [Washington, D.C.: c. 1880]. Folio (433 x 312mm). 49 leaves of watercolours of 48 species, 44 of the leaves preceded by 'illuminated' caption-leaves bearing the botanic binomials, with 6 'illuminated' leaves bearing suitably botanic biblical quotes. Extra-illustrated with a portrait photograph of Miss Passmore, a newspaper obituary, and a typed letter of introduction from the Bureau of Agriculture to Herbert Putnam of the Library of Congress, all mounted on the front free-endpapers. Contemporary brown morocco by Pawson & Nicholson of Philadelphia, covers with elaborate border tooled in gilt and blind, the spine in six compartments with raised bands, repeat decorative tooling in gilt and blind, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges. Provenance: Miss Passmore (by descent to her niece:); Mrs. Mary R. Sumner (see TLS to Putnam).
A VERY FINE ALBUM OF BOTANICAL WATERCOLOURS BY THE NOTED AMERICAN BOTANICAL ARTIST. Miss Passmore trained under Thomas Moran and others at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and came to specialise in botanical watercolours of fruit and flowers (exhibiting at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1892), taught painting in Washington, and was appointed to the division of pomology in the Department of Agriculture in August 1892. She remained their "leading water-color artist" (A.Taylor in accompanying TLS) and reached the position where "in fruits she was unquestionably the leading artist in this country", and continued to work up until shortly before her death on 3 January 1911.
The present album illustrates Miss Passmore's "off-duty" work: she painted fruit to earn a living, and she painted lilies for pleasure. Her work on lilies was clearly known and admired during her lifetime, as the inserted obituary notice writes of the present album as "one of her greatest achievements". A close examination of the flowers in the album reveals that Miss Passmore was undoubtedly well aware of the various family groupings of species according to the Linnean system (her professional life allied with the correct use of the binomial nomenclature prove this). Depite this, she has chosen to interpret 'Lilies' in its widest sense, guided by the common names then current, so although the album includes 14 examples of the genus Lilium, it also includes Water-Lilies (5 different Nymphaea and 2 drawings of the giant Victoria regia), the Barbados lily and 9 other "Amaryllis" (more correctly Hippeastrum or Sprekelia), 2 Day-lilies (Hemerocallis), a Lily-of-the-Valley (Convallaria majalis), a Calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica) and a Plantain Lily (Hosta plantaginea). The drawings, whilst absolutely accurate in botanical terms, have a freedom that is not be found in Miss Passmore's paintings of fruit. This freedom extends to the whole album: the captions are treated as opportunites to experiment with letter-forms and their decoration. The results range from relatively restrained letters with added shadows to a Doyle-esque lakeland scene with fairies or water-nymphs forming the letters through the various poses of their bodies and wings.
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