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With Paintbrush and Shovel: Preserving Virginia’s Wildflowers, Watercolors by BessieNiemeyer Marshall

Amazon.com Price:  $46.50 (as of 03/05/2019 02:06 PST- Details)

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Description

With Paintbrush and Shovel showcases the botanical watercolors of Bessie Niemeyer Marshall, a Virginia artist who received scant recognition all the way through her lifetime. Reproduced for the first time on this volume, Marshall’s beautiful paintings are the main surviving record of a unique WPA project that put women to work creating a wildflower sanctuary in Petersburg, Virginia, all the way through the 1930s.

Nancy Kober affectingly recounts the story of this fascinating project and the ladies involved: the horticulturist Donald Claiborne Holden, who directed the sanctuary’s creation; the ladies of the Petersburg Garden Club and of Petersburg’s African American community, who worked hard, regardless of segregated tasks and facilities, to determine a botanical preserve within the city’s Lee Park; and the artist Bessie Marshall, whose difficult personal circumstances kept her in obscurity all the way through her lifetime in spite of her obvious talent and repeated expressions of interest from curators and benefactors. Marshall sooner or later produced 238 watercolors for the Lee Park collection, 222 of which appear in full color on this book.

With exquisite detail and a subtle palette, the paintings depict a host of native flowers, shrubs, and trees, including some rare or imperiled species. Here, arranged by habitat, are dogwood and cat-tail, pokeweed and passion-flower, angelica and witch-hazel, redbud and rattlesnake-master. Even though many of these species still grow within the vicinity of the former sanctuary, the collection is a reminder of the precarious state of many wildflower habitats and the need for continuing efforts to preserve our botanical and historical heritage.

As a gift, a reference, or simply an inspiring read,With Paintbrush and Shovel is a fittingly beautiful representation of a unique meeting of the forces of nature, history, and art.

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