Lot 513: MEE, Margaret Ursula (1909-1988, illustrator). Flowers of the Brazilian forests collected and

MEE, Margaret Ursula (1909-1988, illustrator). Flowers of the Brazilian forests collected and painted by Margaret Mee foreword on the Brazilian forests by Roberto Burle Marx with a preface by Sir George Taylor. London: Tryon Gallery in association with George Rainbird, 1968.

2° (530 x 390mm). Title in green and black, 5 maps printed in red and black on two facing pages, ORIGINAL PENCIL AND WATERCOLOUR DRAWING (sheet size: 330 x 240mm.) SIGNED AND IDENTIFIED IN PENCIL BY MEE, tipped onto thin grey card leaf bound before the half-title (as called for), 32 coloured plates, uncoloured vignette illustrations, all after Mee. Original vellum gilt, t.e.g., green cloth slip-case.

A FINE COPY, LIMITED TO 506 COPIES SIGNED BY THE ARTIST, THIS NUMBER 8 OF 100 COPIES CONTAINING AN ORIGINAL WATERCOLOUR BY MEE AND BOUND IN VELLUM. In 'terms of artistic skill and scientific accuracy this British artist... can bear comparison with the very greatest artists of the genre, including Ehret and Redouté.' (Oak Spring Flora p.409). Margaret Mee and her husband moved to Brazil in 1952, and between 1956 and 1988 she made a series of exploratory trips into the Amazon, sketching and drawing the magnificent range of plant life in its natural setting. Her corpus of work has become particularly valuable as it now contains accurate representations of a number of plants that have subsequently become very rare. 'I have no doubt that Margaret Mee's work... will go down in the history of botany as that of one of the few artists who understood the meaning of plant life in relation to the beauty of the living.' (Roberto Burle Marx, 'Introduction').

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