Margaret Warriner Buck

Rein-orchis ( Habenaria elegans), from a drawing by Margaret Warriner Buck for The Wild Flowers of California

Ladies' Tresses or Spiranthes Romanzoffianum (now Spiranthes romanzoffiana ), from a drawing by Margaret Warriner Buck for The Wild Flowers of California

Margaret Warriner Buck (April 29, 1857 - April 5, 1929) was an American botanical artist known as a specialist in depicting California wildflowers.

Biography

Buck was born Margaret Warriner in New York, New York, in 1857. ^[1] She studied art at Yale Art School before moving to San Francisco in 1891. She gained a reputation as a botanical artist and specialist in depicting California wildflowers. ^[2] In the 1890s, she and writer Mary Elizabeth Parsons hiked around California with an eye to publishing a book about California flora. The result was the very successful The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits (1897), written by Parsons with over 100 illustrations engraved from Buck's pen-and-ink drawings. ^{[3] [4]} It went through many printings and several editions and was still being reprinted into the 1950s. ^{[5] [6]}

After the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, she worked for Sunset magazine. ^[2] She died in San Rafael, California, in 1929. ^[7]

References

1. Dawdy, Doris Ostrander. Artists of the American West: a biographical dictionary, vol. 3. Sage Books, 1974.
2. Landauer, Susan, William H. Gerdts, and Patricia Trenton. The Not-So-Still Life: A Century of California Painting and Sculpture. University of California Press, 2003, p. 206.
3. Hughes, Edan Milton. Artists in California (1786-1940), vol. 2. San Francisco: Hughes, 1989.
4. "With Western Writers". Sunset 18 (November 1906 – April 1907), p. 592.
5. "Pioneer Wildflower Book on California Reprinted." Desert Magazine, April 1957, pp. 42–43.
6. Sands, Diane T. "An Explosive Botanical Smackdown". California Academy of Sciences website, 2013.
7. Marin Journal, April 11, 1929. (Obituary)