Mary Daisy Arnold (c. 1873 – August 13, 1955)
''Who was Who in American Art''
/ref>["Mary Daisy Arnold". ''The Washington Post'' (August 17, 1955), p. 18] was a botanical artist who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...
(USDA) for over thirty-five years, painting watercolors of a wide variety of fruits. She is one of the three most prolific artists whose work is now preserved in the USDA's Pomological Watercolor Collection.[
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Biography
Arnold studied art in New York and began her long career with USDA in 1904, becoming part of a part of a select cadre of illustrators that included Deborah Griscom Passmore
Deborah Griscom Passmore (1840–1911) was a botanical illustrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture who specialized in paintings of fruit. Her work is now preserved in the USDA's Pomological Watercolor Collection, and she has been called th ...
, Amanda Newton, Elsie Lower, Royal Charles Steadman, and J. Marion Shull.[ Very little else is known about Arnold. With respect to her USDA career, this may be due partly to the fact that records of the National Personnel Record Center in St. Louis dating from before 1921 have been destroyed.][
The 1060 watercolors that Arnold painted for USDA date from between 1908 and 1940.][ Arnold's subjects included many varieties of apples, strawberries, stone fruit, and citrus, as well as other fruits like figs, papayas, and persimmons. She also did some related work such as mounting and coloring ]lantern slides
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a si ...
.[
Arnold lived in the Washington, D.C., area. Outside of her USDA job, she painted landscapes in oil.
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Gallery
References
External links
USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arnold, Mary Daisy
Botanical illustrators
1955 deaths
20th-century American painters
20th-century American women artists
American women illustrators
United States Department of Agriculture people
1873 births
American illustrators