Margaret Mees Amazon: The Diaries Of An Artist Explorer

Recounts Margarte Mees amazing and adventurous journeys theough the Amazon. Mees diaraies and sketcjbooks outline the brilliant career of an outstanding and modest botanical artist.

Editorial Reviews

If this book contained only Mees writings, it would be tempting to dismiss her as just another British eccentric. Her description of unreliable guides, waterlogged dugout canoes, lack of food, drunken prospectors, and other dangers of the jungle quickly becomes repetitive and hackneyed. But this is transcended by her amazing ability to draw and paint the flora of the Amazon River basin, and her spectacular illustrations make up the bulk of this lavish book. Mees love of the Amazon jungle kept her returning despite the hardships. The diaries span her journeys from 1956 to 1984, thus providing additional value by documenting the changes in the landscape over a crucial period of deforestation and population growth. By the end of her career, Mee, while always an amateur, was recognized and supported by the Brazilian government and the National Geographic Society. She died in England in 1988 at the age of 79, ironically the victim of a car crash. Recommended for any collection covering the Amazon.-Daniel Starr, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.