North American Wild Flowers
Mary Vaux Walcott (1860-1940)
Wildflower painter, Mary Vaux Walcott was born into an affluent
Quaker home on July 31, 1860, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where
she grew up. She attended the local Friends' Select School, from
1869-1879, studying drawing and painting privately for four years.
She and her father, holding the Quaker belief in the importance
of travel and nature study, began making regular trips to the
American West and Canada, after the mother died in 1880.
Walcott early painted landscapes, but soon turned to wildflowers,
carrying a set of watercolors. Walcott had an exhibition of her
paintings at the Anderson Galleries, New York, in 1924. She would
complete more than one thousand wildflower paintings, many appearing
in her five-volume, North American Wild Flowers, published, in
1925, by the Smithsonian Institution. She was working on a two-volume
set of watercolors when she died on August 22, 1940, in New Brunswick,
Canada. Source: Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, "An
Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West"
Gilley's Gallery owns the four published
volumes of "North American Wild Flowers." The following
images are just a small sample of the complete volumes of the
four volumes of prints published by the Smithsonian Institute.
Please call or stop by if you are looking for something specific
that you do not see here on the site.
