CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Ros, Andreea Catalina |
|---|---|
| Title | Marianne North (1830-1890): Amateur Women Botanists Imagining Aesthetics of Domesticity in the Tropics |
| Summary | This thesis investigates how women's participation in scientific work is shaped by gendered ideologies about public and private spaces as they were produced and reproduced in Victorian scientific communities. My central focus is the work of Marianne North (1830-1890), a popular travel writer, painter and amateur botanist who planned, curated and in 1882 eventually opened the Marianne North Art Gallery in Botanic Gardens, Kew (London). The Gallery which combines elements of natural history museums, art gallery and domestic private spaces remains the only solo permanent exhibition of a female artist’s work in Britain. I begin by analyzing North's participation in scientific circles, both within London and outside it. I argue that the insufficient professionalization of Victorian science meant that male scientists had to rely on amateurs like North to helped to sustain an informal network of friends and acquaintances which created and disseminated scientific knowledge. Secondly, I look more closely on North's painting style and the content of her visual art. North defined her painting style while visiting Jamaica in 1871-72 and I will try to find out why this happened and why the transformations in Jamaica’s landscape that were enacted through colonial botany had such a big impact on her work. In my third and final chapter I bring the focus back on the Marianne North Art Gallery as I try to untangle both how women could have access to scientific spaces in Victorian London and the multiple, sometimes conflicting uses and meanings the Gallery had within Kew Gardens. |
| Supervisor | Emese Lafferton |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/ros_andreea.pdf |
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