Pineland Aster (Aster squarrosus)

Art Historical Context

Mary Vaux Walcott'sPineland Aster (Asterarrosus)*, in 1922, the delicate beauty of this native North American wildflower with scientific precision and artistic grace. Walcott, a pioneering botanist and artist (1860–1940), dedicated much of her career to documenting the continent's flora through watercolor paintings, culminating in her five-volume *North American Wild Flowers* between 1924 and 1928. This piece, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a gift from the artist herself, exemplifies her fieldwork in remote areas like the Canadian Rockies and Appalachians, where she sketched spe...