Nature into Art: An Interview with Anne Ophelia Dowden

For more than twenty years, Anne Ophelia Dowden, one of the world's foremost botanical illustrators, has found in the children's book field a compatible outlet for her subtly colored, incisively rendered naturalist's art. Among the many juvenile books that she has both written and illustrated are Look at a Flower (1963), The Secret Life of the Flowers (1964), Roses (1965), Wild Green Things in the City: A Book of Weeds (1972), The Blossom on the Bough: A Book of Trees (1975), State Flowers (1978), and This Noble Harvest: A Chronicle of Herbs (1979). She is the illustrator of Shakespeare's Flowers, by Jessica Kerr (1969), Hal Borland's The Golden Circle: A Book of Months (1977), and, most recently, of Robert Crowell's The Lore and Legends of Flowers (1982).

Her artwork has also appeared in Life, Natural History, Audubon, and The Country Journal, among other magazines; has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States; and has been reproduced in a series of limited-edition collector's prints. As a writer Dowden has shown an unusual knack for recasting highly intricate botanical matters into a clear, compelling story. In scientifically precise, graphically eloquent watercolor paintings, she has depicted plants, flowers, and leaves in the fullness of their form.

Her Manhattan studio is a long, sparsely furnished, brightly-lit room where, when a book is in progress, the artist's drafting table, available shelf space, and other corner crevices may become wildly littered with massed bundles of carefully selected and wrapped dried botanical specimens. A nearby bathtub has at times been pressed into service as a holding area for more perishable fresh cuttings. Even the post office has occasionally lent a hand, delivering exotic plant materials in parcels urgently dispatched from Texas, California, and the Middle East—all in the interest of her imperturbably rigorous blend of science and art.

Dowden, who now works full-time on her books, has also been a teacher and was the first chairperson of the Art Department of Manhattanville College. Her husband, the late Raymond Baxter Dowden, was also an artist and for many years served as head of Cooper Union's Department of Art.

The following interview was recorded in her studio in December, 1981:

LSM: How did you first become interested in plants and flowers?

AOD: I've always been since I was a child in Colorado. My father was on the faculty of the University of Colorado and we had neighbors who were botanists and biologists. So as a child I was always looking. I still have drawings in my files that I did when I was in about the eighth grade of plants and insects, especially spiders. When I was little, I was always learning the names of things and collecting and drawing. But, at that time, even when I went to art school and wanted to be an illustrator, I didn't think of being a nature illustrator.

LSM: When did that idea first occur to you?

AOD: Not until quite a long time after I had started being a professional artist. I came to New York in the Depression and had to get a job teaching. At the same time I did textile design, drapery fabrics with big floral patterns, and because floral patterns were taking up most of my time, I began making sketches in the summer for research material on flowers and leaves. I decided I enjoyed making these research drawings more than I did designing textiles. So I began concentrating on botanical illustration. I made a series of paintings of edible plants, which required a lot of research, and sold it to Life Magazine. Then I gave up both teaching and drapery design and started really doing what I probably should have been doing from my early twenties.

LSM: What other publishing outlets existed at that time for a botanical illustrator?

AOD: Well there were, of course, the various nature magazines like Natural History. When I first started peddling my work it was during the war, money was scarce, and publishers didn't want to...