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Drawing From Life: Maud H. Purdy and 90 Years of Women Artists at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Exhibition Catalog
Ninety Years of Women Artists at BBG
Brooklyn Botanic Garden was founded in 1910 and opened its gates to the public in the spring of the following year. By then the Garden's first director, Charles Stuart Gager, had appointed a curator of plants, two gardeners, and a librarian. What may seem curious to us today is that an artist, Maud H. Purdy, was also among Gager's earliest appointments. Purdy was hired in 1913, and for the next 32 years the Garden relied upon her art to bring the world of plants to life in lectures, horticultural displays, and publications. After Purdy retired, her art gradually slipped from view and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, like most contemporary public gardens, would never have another full-time staff artist.
Maud Purdy sketching in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, 1923. Photograph by Louis Buhle.
Over the years, inspired by irresistibly beautiful floral subjects, many artists have painted at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Some, like Anne Ophelia Dowden, whose work is included in this exhibition, developed close working relationships with BBG botanists and horticulturists, but no one painted the Garden's collections as systematically as Purdy had until the founding of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium Society in 2000. The mission of the Florilegium Society is to document the Garden's living collections. To date, the Society's 45 members, 10 of whom also are represented in this exhibition, have donated to the Florilegium nearly 150 paintings of the Garden's plants.
Patricia Jonas, curator of the Florilegium Society Collection and director of Library Services, saw that the Garden's new commitment to botanical art was anchored in its history and in Purdy's remarkable work. She and other BBG staff, particularly Kirsten Munro and Caledonia Kearns in the institutional funding office, were determined to rescue Purdy from obscurity and make her work available for study and appreciation. With generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), 235 of Purdy's paintings, illustrations, and sketches were digitized in 2004, and a selection of images was made available on the BBG website, bbg.org.
Additional support from NYSCA, from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Auxiliary has culminated in this exhibition and catalog. As we plan for the Garden's centennial in 2010, we look back on our history and forward to our future. It is a great pleasure at this time to present original art from Brooklyn Botanic Garden's special collections—an important part of this institution's rich holdings.
Scot Medbury, President
September 2007
Major support for this exhibition is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
