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A Gift of Flowers An Exhibition of Floral Images from Special Collections Commemorating the Centennial of Kate Furbish's "Flora of Maine."
Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, 2nd Floor Gallery. In 1908, self-taught botanist and painter Kate Furbish completed her monumental "Flora of Maine," a life-long project of depicting the flowering plants then known to grow in Maine , and presented her work to Bowdoin College ."Flora of Maine" consists of 1,326 watercolors and pencil sketches, assembled in fourteen half-morocco volumes and arranged by plant families; two additional volumes concern mushrooms. In celebration of the centennial of that gift, the Library is pleased to exhibit some of these watercolor paintings. Numerous additional books in Special Collections also feature flowers. Some are botanical works that treat flowers scientifically. Others evoke flowers in literary or artistic contexts. In still others, floral images or designs appear purely decoratively. That flowers have appeared in printed works in so many different ways demonstrates their universal appeal--for their intrinsic beauty, their symbolic value, the shapes and colors that they supply for artistic design, and their uplifting affect on our emotions and our senses. In addition to Furbish's paintings, this exhibit also offers examples of the various ways that illustrators, authors, book designers, and bookbinders have featured flowers from the Middle Ages until the present day. For further information, please call 207.725.3288 |
