emily  stackhouse

Botanist, Illustrator, Writer

1811 - 1870

Suggested by Manice Stabbins

Manice writes, “Emily Stackhouse painted over 620 watercolours of plants now in collections at Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum. She collected and classified nearly all of the British mosses. Her work was used in many publications often with no acknowledgment of her authorship. Publications by the Rev Charles Alexander Johns in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge used her illustrations in Botanical Rambles, Flowers of the Field, Forest Trees of Britain and A Week at the Lizard.

I have tremendous admiration for the 19th century botanists and botanical artists. Emily Stackhouse, despite being incredibly talented and dedicated to her science and art, was given little recognition during her life but has left an invaluable body of work. Like so many women, her work was given scant acknowledgement but deserves more.”

Emily was born into an old Cornish family which included several botanists. Her father Rev Stackhouse inherited the estate of Trehane, Probus where Emily lived, though she traveled extensively in Britain in pursuit of her studies. She was a friend of Emily Warren also a Women of Cornwall nominee.”

Edited from the Women in Cornwall archive:
“In 1846 four albums of Emily’s ‘beautiful botanical drawings’…were displayed at the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Exhibition, Falmouth, where they received a Bronze Medal in the Natural History section. The judges stated doubts about their placement there, thinking they belonged for judgment in the amateur artist category…Emily’s modern-day biographer, Clifford Evans, stated she was ‘a botanist who painted’ and one of the great un-heralded illustrators of her time. Her writings were largely unattributed contributions (from ‘a lady’) to papers of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (RIC), but in two articles…she also established her credentials as a recognized writer.”