Book Description
This thesis studies botanical illustration by Canadian women between 1830 and 1930 from three aspects: the gendered history of botany from its beginnings as a general practice that later turned into a systematized science, botany's colonial agency in Canada, and the influence that garden design had on botanical illustration. ... My intention is to discuss nineteenth-century botanical illustration by Canadian women in terms of it being a cultural product that both fed female amateur floriculture and horticulture in England and Canada and that offered possibilities to cultivate professional identity more usually reserved for men. Women's authority to present the new masculine science of botany was at issue as women were caught in a complex social and scientific network that, on the one hand, encouraged them to teach botany and to produce botanical art, while on the other, restricted them from participating in higher scientific circles necessary for their advancement. As a result, their botanical production was a multivalent reflection of botanical education, of personal relationships with nature, and of colonial circumstances and expectations.