Product Description

For thirty-two years, the artist Margaret Mee was enchanted by and lured back again and again to the massive, unpredictable and fertile rainforests of Amazonas. Her initial objective, to search out and illustrate the glorious flora growing in the tree canopies and along the innumerable waterways of the great rivers of the Amazon basin, was later combined with a growing concern at the commercial plunder of the great forests. Her first expedition to Amazonas was in 1956 and it was then that she began to keep the diaries that, along with her paintings, drawings and sketches, make up this book. Although plant hunting always came first whenever possible and practical, other events often took over. A small dug-out canoe could become a waterlogged, if not dangerous, place to be; rapids had to be got through; recalcitrant boatmen were gently or sternly coerced; drunken prospectors were held off with a revolver. She was fascinated by the rich mix of Brazilians she came across and often lived with for a time; she was especially fond of the riverines she met, and over the years became friends with many of them. Between expeditions, some of which lasted for up to four months, Margaret returned home to Sul Paulo, to teaching commitments, and to her own painting. Unpredictable weather, transport and guides meant she often had to make hurried in situ sketches (always meticulously annotated) which she later worked up into colored sketches and finished paintings. In the autumn of 1988, just after what was sadly to be her last expedition, Margaret came to England to lecture to the Royal Geographic Society and attend the opening of an exhibition of her paintings, Margaret Mee’s Amazon, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It is ironic that this enthusiastic lover of the Amazon, who had braved so many hazardous and alarming situations, was killed in a car crash in England. She was seventy-nine, keen to return to the Amazon, and still producing fine work. There is every reason to suppose that more passion and more painting would have been forthcoming. As it is, her legacy is incalculable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #646503 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 300 pages

From Booklist
British botanical artist and Amazon explorer Margaret Mee (1909-88) recorded her observations with pen and brush. Like a great plant explorer, Mee had a profound affinity for the place, its plants, and its people. In this munificent volume, her graceful and exquisitely detailed paintings of flora and fauna, works that combine both science and art, are accompanied by photographs and her extensive travel journals. Filled with botanical information and tales of adventure and hardship--including boat trouble, feuds, getting lost, and being bitten so fiercely by insects that her eyes swelled shut and she had to wrap her hands in plastic--Mee's travelogues are as riveting as her paintings are beautiful. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Margaret Mee was born in Chesham, Buckinghamshire in 1909. She died tragically in a road accident in Leicestershire in 1988. For more than 35 years she had lived in Brazil with her husband. Soon after her death her name was added to the World Wide Fund for Nature, International Conservation Roll of Honour.

Customer Reviews

Amazing Drawings of 32 Amazon Expeditions
At once an art, adventure, and biography, MARGARET MEE'S AMAZON: DIARIES OF AN ARTIST EXPLORER is profiled here for its simply gorgeous pages packed with botanical illustration and photos. Unlike most illustration titles, however, MARGARET MEE'S AMAZON isn't just a photo or illustration catalog, but an in-depth survey blending her amazing drawings with accounts of her thirty-two years of expeditions into the Amazon rainforest. Her first expedition to Amazonas was in 1956, where she began the diaries and sketchbooks which comprise this title. From vivid accounts of plant-collecting expeditions to the exhibition of her paintings at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew (who work with Antique Collector's Club in producing this title, this is a definitive, outstanding piece holding wide-ranging interest and recommendation from art library holdings to botany collections, natural history holdings, and even the general-interest public library collection.

Superb
Passionately written and superbly illustrated; a must have for the tropical afficionado's library and the tropical gardener and botanist

Amazing
Margaret Mee was an amazing woman and her work is exquisite. This book is perfect because it shows a great part of Mee's work in Amazon in her own words, with beautiful illustrations and photographs. It's a book to look and read all the time.