Marianne North Gallery

Some Wild Flowers of Quilpue Chili / Wild flowers from Quilpue, Chile.


"- In the end, Marianne North was not a brilliant artist either.
- Who-who?
- Didn't I tell you? This is the woman who painted the puyu.
- Forgive what she painted?
- Puyu. Puia is such a three-meter blue grass. Actually, it happens even higher. Grows in the Andes. It is surrounded by legends - they say, a dazzling radiance emanates from it, and its leaves are like steel swords, and it blooms once every one and a half hundred years, and from time to time self-ignites and burns, then to be reborn from the ashes ...
- Is it true?
- I have no idea. I say - legends, for what I bought, for what I sell. So, in the nineteenth century, European botanists really wanted to get at least some image of this mysterious giant grass. But they could not get to it - after all, the Andes, the end of the world, you also have to climb the mountains. So they would have remained without a puja, if not for the brave English old woman Marianne North. She, you see, has been painting plants all her life. What a decent occupation, worthy of a hobby for an old maid from a good family. Well, that is, it was believed that it was a hobby, I understand that drawing turned out to be a business that absorbed Marianne entirely. She, frankly, did not have enough stars from the sky, but botanists appreciated her work, because Miss North was extremely attentive to detail. From them, she learned about the puyu, which none of the Europeans had ever seen. I decided that it was a disgrace, and went to paint her.
- To the Andes?
- That's it. And you keep in mind, this is the middle of the nineteenth century. Traveling to another continent is not an easy task, especially for a fragile, painful, in addition to everything, an almost deaf lady in her fifties.
But Marianne did not raise an eyebrow. I packed up and went to South America. First by ship across the Atlantic. Then she found a guide and climbed to the Andes, to a height of four thousand meters. We rode on mules, and in some parts of the way we had to walk on the off-road and drag the load on ourselves. Nothing, got there and dragged the easel. She painted a picture "Blue Puja and Moths". And she safely brought her home, to the delight of British botanists, hefty men in their prime, who thought a trip to the Andes was completely impracticable. "

"Key from yellow metal" M. Fry