The Wildflower Portfolio

A Tale of Two Women The Wildflower Portfolio Sue LeAf he project began as a gift. Emma and Thomas had come to the holidays. At some time during the TIn 1883, twenty- four- year- old Minneapolis in 1867 as children. Their visit, Emma presented Thomas with a Emma Roberts started collecting, father, John Roberts, a descendent of portfolio of 40 of her original water- identifying, and painting watercolor a Germantown, Pennsylvania, Quaker color paintings of Minnesota’s wild- portraits of wildflowers growing on family, suffered from tuberculosis. flowers. They were done on heavy the untamed edges of Minneapolis. His physician had urged a “fresh air” paper, the detailed images including She was aided by her older brother cure. As their father sought relief in bloom, leaves, stem, and often roots. Thomas, who knew where special the pure air of a young Minneapolis, The back of each painting was labeled plants grew— early in the project, the children frequently accompanied with common and scientific names, he discovered a non- native low hop- him, learning from him an apprecia- and many of them included the hab- clover in A. J. Hill’s yard in St. Paul tion of nature. Emma was particularly itat from which the flower had been and took it home to her.1 She may not taken with plants, while Thomas fo- collected. Thomas, a fine botanist have told him that the paintings were cused on birds. In 1881 Emma began himself, appreciated the scientific ac- destined as a present for him, but drawing lessons, the first indication curacy of the renderings and showed surely she caught his enthusiasm for from family papers that she was seri- them to Philadelphia horticulturist Minnesota’s wildflowers and trans- ously interested in art.2 Thomas Meehan, whom he met at a ferred it to her brush. Her artistic eye In September 1883, Emma bade social gathering. Meehan, formerly for the beauty and delicacy revealed her brother good- bye as he left for of England’s Kew Gardens, praised in Minnesota’s wildflowers led to his second year of medical school myriad watercolors now housed at at the University of Pennsylvania in the University of Minnesota’s Ander- Philadelphia. For Christmas that year, SUE LEAF is the author of A Love Affair sen Horticultural Library at the Land- Emma traveled east, and the two met with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler scape Arboretum in Chaska. at the Baltimore home of relatives for Roberts (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), the first full- length biography of Dr. Thomas Sadler Roberts (1858–1946) Portraits of the artists as young women: Agnes Williams of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, of Minneapolis. and Emma Roberts (right) of Minneapolis FALL 2015 277 was self- taught and had honed his expertise in his teen years. With like- minded friends, he collected and identified plants throughout the Minneapolis environs. In 1879 he had served on the state Natural History Survey, collecting plants along the north shore of Lake Superior. His identification list of Minnesota native plants was included in Warren Up- ham’s catalog of the state’s plants for the Geological and Natural History Survey’s annual report.6 Agnes had been a freshman at Quaker- affiliated Swarthmore College in 1876–77, where her uncle, Edward Magill, was president. She took a classical course of study that included natural history, comparative anatomy, and comparative physiology.7 There is no record of artistic coursework, but a few of the first flowers she painted several years later for Thomas Roberts were collected at East Gloucester, Massachusetts, home to the Rocky Neck Art Colony, hinting that she took summer classes there. Even her early work is finely wrought, sug- gesting that she had been trained in watercolor technique. Both Emma and Agnes were Emma Roberts, prairie smoke, Minneapolis, 1883. She labeled the back with its common raised in a Quaker environment, a and scientific names and habitat: “Gravely slopes, prairie, and open woodland.” culture long involved in nature study. This environment was particularly the painstaking detail. Emma was not Neither Emma nor Agnes had strong for Agnes, who grew up on the exceptional in her attention to scien- professional education in botany, but family farm in Bucks County, Penn- tific detail, however. Many American British and American society had sylvania, and remained in the area for women of the time were employing long considered the study of plants most of her life. America’s first natu- hand lenses and microscopes to ana- an appropriate feminine pursuit. ralists, father and son John and Wil- lyze flower parts.3 Scientific study was seen to ward off liam Bartram of Philadelphia, were Later that winter, Thomas showed frivolity, offer an alternative to card Quakers, and many bird watchers, the paintings to a Philadelphia friend, playing, and make women better con- plant illustrators, and shell collectors Agnes B. Williams, the sister of his versationalists and mothers. Botany were spawned in the nurturing milieu roommate. Agnes was also a water- was preferable to zoology for women of Philadelphia.8 colorist and interested in natural because it did not involve using weap- history. She offered to contribute her ons or killing animals.5 own work to the portfolio. As spring Both women had some training, mma continued to paint came to the Pennsylvania country- however. Emma’s drawing lessons Ethrough the summers 1884 and side, Thomas purchased 48 sheets of doubtless attuned her eye to detail, 1885, adding at least 57 portraits to Bristol board to give to Agnes in an- and she probably received tutelage the wildflower portfolio. She seemed ticipation of the coming field season.4 in plants from her brother, who not to have discriminated, selecting 278 MINNESOTA HISTORY whatever plants she came across medicine practice in Minneapolis. A botanical specimens. The director that interested her: ground plums few years later, as the state of Minne- of the exposition’s Anthropological and wood anemone, trillium (from sota was planning its display for the Building was drawn to the paintings Minnehaha Falls) and violets. She 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and arranged for them to hang in that collected blazing stars in Minneap- in Chicago, Emma was approached by venue for a short time, where they olis and cardinal flowers in St. Paul. Mrs. Louise Sampson of the exhibit’s gained a wider audience and won an Many bog plants appear in her collec- Committee on Flora to provide her award. tion, perhaps taken from remnants paintings for inclusion in the show. After the close of the exposition of the tamarack swamp that lay west Mrs. Sampson, a social friend of the in October 1893, the watercolors and south of the Roberts family home Robertses, had to coax Thomas to came back to Minnesota and hung in the area that today encompasses lend the collection. He was reluctant on display in the Minneapolis Public the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, to have the cherished works leave his Library. In 1922 Thomas Roberts do- Parade Stadium, and the city im- possession.11 nated a collection of 155 watercolors pound lot.9 At the fair, the watercolors were to the Museum of Natural History, Meanwhile, in the summer of exhibited on the Minnesota Building’s forerunner of the Bell Museum, on 1884, Agnes took up her brush. Like main floor, where they held their own the University of Minnesota’s Min- Emma’s, her work is botanically de- against a display of dried, pressed neapolis campus. (He served as the tailed and accurate. With meticulous flowers that also depicted the state’s museum’s director.) The paintings, a attention, she painted the intricate flower parts that identify the plant to species and the fine root hairs of root systems that are so difficult to collect intact. Most of her 1884 flowers grew around The Hedges, her familial home, and other locales in Bucks County, but she also painted flowers taken in Manchester, Vermont, and the New Jersey Pine Barrens. There are five paintings of bog flowers collected in Minneapolis, including a showy lady’s slipper. The back of one painting bears the initials T.S.R., probably indicating that Thomas collected the specimens while he was in Minneapolis for the summer and sent them to Agnes.10 There is no evidence that Agnes herself visited Minneap- olis at that time, and there are other dated paintings that place her in Pennsylvania during the same period. By the end of the 1884 growing season, the two women had added 60 paintings to the portfolio, 18 from Emma and 42 from Agnes. Emma contributed to the collection until 1888; Agnes continued to paint wildflowers through the 1890s. The watercolors presumably re- turned to Minnesota with Roberts in 1886 when he completed his medical residency and set up a general- Agnes Williams, black berry lily, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, August 1884 FALL 2015 279 noon teas. In 1896 Emma took a paid 1937. She lived at The Hedges, caring job as assistant director of drawing for aging parents in the early 1900s. for the Minneapolis public schools Her final painting in the wildflower and became the head of the program portfolio was made in 1905, but it is in 1904. She turned her attention not known when the last of her paint- away from painting and toward art ings made it into the collection. She education. In the first decades of the was married— for the first time— in twentieth century, she developed 1908, at the age of 48, to Mark Palmer, an art- appreciation curriculum that a farmer.15 would reach all of the school systems’ The only record of the two art- children.

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