Art Meets Science

31/03/2026

Botanist and artist Marianne North (1830–1890) dedicated her life to documenting plants from around the world through painting.

Unlike traditional botanical illustrators, who often isolated specimens against plain backgrounds, North painted plants in their natural environments, showing them growing within forests, jungles, and landscapes. She worked primarily in oil paint rather than the conventional watercolour, giving her paintings an unusually vibrant colour and depth compared to other botanical art of the period.

Her work sits within the nineteenth-century intersection of art, botany, and scientific exploration – a time when naturalists were cataloguing global plant life and artists played a key role in recording species before photography became widely practical.

During the late-nineteenth century, North established her own gallery at Kew to display her paintings, today known as the Marianne North Gallery, which remains one of the most unique collections of botanical art in the world.

Through her explorations, discoveries, and botanical documentation, she left behind a beautiful visual record of plant life across the globe.



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27/03/2026

Pencil-drawn illustration of the Kokio-ula (Hibiscus Arnottianus) from the 'Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands' by Mrs Frances Sinclair, first published in 1885.

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24/03/2026

Few women have made such a prolific contributions to scientific thinking as the English fossil collector and palaeontologist, Mary Anning. Born in May, 1799, Anning worked along the Jurassic coast, combing the beaches along the English channel looking for fossils. She would be become known around the world for her discoveries in fossils, with her findings proactively changing the scientific understanding of prehistoric life and the history of the Earth in the nineteenth century.

She took advantage of the Jurassic marine fossil beds that lay exposed from landslides during the winter months, gathering new fossils quickly before they were washed away by the tide. Her discoveries included the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons, the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany, as well as the first correctly identified ichtyosaur skeleton.

As a woman of the period, Anning was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London, and so remained unfunded, and often uncredited for her scientific contributions. Her friend and fellow geologist Henry De la Beche painted 'Duria Antiquior' (pictured here) based on the fossils that Anning had found. It was the first pictorial representation of a prehistoric scene to be widely circulated. Beche sold prints of it to help fund Anning's work.

While she became known in geological circles in around the world, she remained unpublished in the scientific journals. It was only after her death in 1847, that her life and work became of interest.

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Illustration: Letter and drawing from Mary Anning announcing the discovery of a fossil animal now known as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, 1823

20/03/2026

An American painter and writer, Emily Noyes Vanderpoel explored colour theory through a strikingly systematic approach. One that would go on to change our understanding of colour across the fields of art, science, and design.

Working primarily in watercolours and oils, she was an active member (and later vice president) of the New York Watercolour Club. Alongside her artistic career, she developed a deep interest in the science and structure of colour, which led her to publish 'Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color' in 1902.

In this groundbreaking book, Vanderpoel introduced a method of colour analysis using gridded diagrams. She studied everyday objects by breaking their colours down into a structured 10×10 grid of squares. Each square represented a specific hue from the object, transforming complex colour palettes into geometric visual maps.

Vanderpoel’s work emerged from a nineteenth-century moment when scientists and artists were increasingly fascinated by colour systems and perception, building on ideas developed by theorists such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Michel Eugène Chevreul. Like these earlier thinkers, she sought to understand colour systematically –her grid diagrams offered a uniquely visual way of mapping how colours appear together in the natural world.

Decades before modern abstraction and data visualisation became widespread, Vanderpoel was translating the colours of the world into systematic patterns that looked remarkably contemporary.

Read more about Vanderpoel's pioneering work in colour on the blog: https://bit.ly/4bhXrmt

Colour theory underpins all creative understanding. Having been evolved and enriched by the contributions of notable scholars and pioneering publications,… Read more

17/03/2026

Anna Maria Hussey, is often regarded as Britain’s first female mycologist. She authored 'Illustrations of British Mycology' (1847–1855), a pioneering two-volume work beautifully blending art and science.

Co-illustrated by her sister Frances Reed, the collection features detailed fungal illustrations and scientific observations that established female-led mycological study in Britain. The groundbreaking work influenced many future contemporaries despite receiving little formal recognition at the time.

The mid-nineteenth century was a period of rapid transformation in the natural sciences, and the little-understood world of fungi offered new ground for speculation and discovery. As a woman in this time, it was nearly impossible to be recognised as a legitimate scientist, with the Victorian scientific establishment being notoriously hostile to female contributors, leading to a period of little credit for many working in the field.

Often overlooked and seldom credited, Hussey’s legacy as a pioneering woman in mycology endures through her publication & contributions to the field, staging her as a revolutionary voice in the history of natural science and a leading woman in mycology.

Read more about Anna Maria Hussey and the other pioneering female mycologists of the Victorian period: https://bit.ly/3NiH6pF

14/03/2026

Anna Atkins (1799–1871) is often celebrated as one of the earliest pioneers of photography. Born in 1799, she is the creator of what is widely considered the first book illustrated with photographic images, beautifully capturing natural botanical forms in brilliant blue cyanotypes.

The cyanotype was a process invented in 1842 by scientist Sir John Herschel (1792–1871). The images are created by coating paper with light-sensitive iron salts, placing objects directly on the surface, and exposing the sheet to sunlight. After rinsing the paper in water, the exposed areas turn a rich Prussian blue while the objects leave behind pale silhouettes. The result is a striking photograph that captures every delicate detail.

Atkins used this process to document algae, seaweed, and other botanical specimens from her personal collection, carefully arranging plants on treated paper to create volumes of luminous blue impressions. In 1843, she began publishing 'Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions', a groundbreaking work that was the first of its kind, combining scientific classification with photographic imagery.

Read more about the life and work of Anna Atkins on the blog: https://bit.ly/4sCT0d9

Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes artfully blend the worlds of botany and photography. Creating a collection of Prussian blue impressions that would… Read more

11/03/2026

Drops of Water by Agnes Catlow, 1851.

Through her writing, Catlow presents microscopy as a serious scientific practice rather than a novelty. She played a vital role in nineteenth-century science by making the study of microscopy intellectually credible to the general reader.

Working in a period when women were largely excluded from formal scientific authority, Catlow's authorship itself was influential as she claimed space as a knowledgeable interpreter of science.

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05/03/2026

Maria Sibylla Merian 🦋 - A pioneering artist-naturalist whose discoveries in entomology revolutionised our understanding of metamorphosis in insects.

Maria Merian is one of the most influential artist-naturalists of the eighteenth century. Working in entomology, she artfully illustrated her discoveries on the metamorphosis of butterflies and insects and created one of the most beautiful expositions on the subject ever seen.

While she was not the first to explore the process of metamorphosis in insects, her work often referred to that of Dutch biologist Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680), Merian was pioneering in her discoveries and documentation style.

Observing her specimens from life rather than dried or preserved, her vibrant illustrations exhibit each insect in question, be it butterfly, moth, ant, or spider, in all stages of metamorphosis, accompanied by its host plant.

As one of the first in the field to question the relationships between organisms, Merian’s documentation style encapsulated what she saw in nature first-hand in stunning form and colour.

Her work challenged the conclusions of her predecessors, such as Aristotle, by actualising the transformative process the insect undergoes as it evolves from larvae to pupa to full form.

Her brilliant illustrations moved away from the traditionally static scientific drawings that showed individual specimens alone, in their preserved state, arranged as if pinned to the page. Her innovative technique revolutionised the genre of natural history illustration, setting a new standard for botanical and ecological documentation while advancing understanding of insect metamorphosis.

In both art and science, Merian’s work stands as a shining example of female ingenuity, scientific discovery, and creative expression. This seminal volume sits at the heart of her entomological work, illuminating the intricacies of insect metamorphosis she observed firsthand.

Driven by her interest in the life cycles of butterflies and insects, she discovered plants and insects previously unknown to scholars, documenting their relationship with nature in a way never before seen. She built a stunning exposition of entomological knowledge, which is nothing short of revolutionary.

Read more about her life and work in the Art Meets Science journal. Head to the link in our bio or visit https://bit.ly/4rHw4c9

01/03/2026

Throughout history, the stories of remarkable women who defied societal norms are often outnumbered by the narratives of their male counterparts. Behind many of history's most important discoveries are female innovators whose contributions transformed medicine, technology, environmental science, mathematics, and more. Some were celebrated in their time, but the majority were not.

March marks , a time to celebrate the remarkable women whose intellect, resilience, and imagination not only helped shape the world, but also continue to inspire it. Throughout the month, we'll be highlighting brilliant women across the arts and sciences, bringing their stories to the forefront and championing their pioneering efforts.

Images:
1. Oil painting of artist-naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) by Jacob Marrel, 1679
2. Portrait of the early photographer and illustrator Anna Atkins (1799–1871)
3. Painting of fossil collector and palaeontologist Mary Anning (1799–1847), 1842
4. Photograph of botanist and painter Marianne North (1830–1890)
5. Photograph of colour scientist Emily Noyes Vanderpoel (1842–1939)

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27/02/2026

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