Artist · 11 prints
Mary Vaux Walcott Prints
About Mary Vaux Walcott
Mary Vaux Walcott (1860–1940) was an American artist and naturalist, born in Philadelphia to a wealthy Quaker family. Summers in the Canadian Rockies made her a keen climber and photographer, and with her brothers she documented the retreat of the Illecillewaet Glacier, some of the earliest glacier research in Canada. In 1914 she married Charles Doolittle Walcott, a paleontologist and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Mount Mary Vaux in Jasper National Park is named after her. She died in St Andrews, New Brunswick.
Walcott is best known for her watercolours of North American wild flowers. The Smithsonian published 400 of them as North American Wild Flowers, in five volumes, between 1925 and 1929, and her paintings for Illustrations of North American Pitcherplants appeared in 1935. Her work is valued both as art and as an accurate botanical record. She also served on the federal Board of Indian Commissioners from 1927 to 1932.
Mary Vaux Walcott prints: reproductions of botanical watercolours of North American wild flowers by the American artist and naturalist Mary Vaux Walcott. The collection includes Wild Sweet Crab (Malus coronaria) (1920), Red Lily (Lilium montanum) (1923), Lilac Mariposa (Calochortus splendens) (1926), Sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana) (1927) and Western Blue Flag (Iris missouriensis) (1933).
This selection focuses on single flowering plants shown against a plain white ground: irises, lilies, mariposa, magnolia, crab apple blossom, rose gentian and air plants. Each plant is painted with botanical accuracy and listed here by its common and Latin name. The colours are soft and natural.
The light grounds and soft colour suit bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and hallways, and several plates hung together in a grid or row work well above a bed or console. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
