Margaret Rebecca Dickinson – A Botanical Artist of the Border Counties
The Granary Gallery
22 October – 19 February 2023. Open Wednesday – Sunday 11am-4pm with free admission.
A new exhibition celebrating the life of the 19th Century Botanist Margaret Rebecca Dickinson will be opening at The Granary Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed on the 22 October 2022.
Margaret Rebecca Dickinson was a talented and prolific botanical artist who was born in Newcastle in 1821. She lived in Newcastle with her family for 40 years, before moving to Gattonside, near Melrose, in the Scottish Borders in 1859 and then, a decade later, to Norham in north Northumberland, where she lived for a further 50 years, until her death in 1918.
She painted the wildflowers and some cultivated flowers of the Border Counties and travelled widely around the British Isles collecting and recording her plants. Although she was relatively unrecognised during her lifetime, she left an enormous visual legacy of watercolour paintings of wild and cultivated plants. At a time when photography was in its infancy, her delicate and detailed paintings still capture the beauty of plant specimens, some now very rare or indeed extinct in the region.
Much of her collection of paintings was left to the Natural History Society of Northumbria and exhibition includes over 30 works on loan from the society including portraits of plant specimens from Norham, Kelso, Berwick, Spittal and Holy Island where she documented field garlic, brook weed, sea campion, beaked parsley, lesser water plantain and knotted trefoil.
Between 1886 and 1893, Dickinson embarked on a new venture, combining her talents in gardening and botanical illustration, she painted detailed portraits of daffodils, many of which she grew herself. These are now in the collection of the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library who have agreed to loan a number of these works for the exhibition.
Clare Freeman, Director of the Natural History Society of Northumbria said ‘I am delighted to loan these works to the Maltings for their exhibition at the Granary Gallery. It is particularly rewarding for this beautiful artwork to return and to the area of Northumberland where Margaret Rebecca Dickinson spent most of her life. The exhibition will allow people to be captivated the delicate watercolours and will give insight towards the botanical diversity of the area at the time. It is exiting to be able to use the NHSN Archive in this way, and to share North East Natural History with a wider audience’.
The exhibition, which has also been organised with the help of Berwick Naturalist Club, opens at The Granary Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed on the 22 October and runs until 19 February 2023. Open Wednesday – Sunday 11am-4pm with free admission.
The exhibition has been made possible with the kind support of The Finnis Scott Foundation and Sir James Knott Trust.