Lilac Clematis (Atragene occidentalis)
Margaret Neilson Armstrong American
Not on view
Margaret Armstrong came from an artistic family (her father, D. Maitland Armstrong, established a stained-glass company, where her sister Helen also worked). After studying at New York’s Art Students League, Armstrong became an illustrator and book-cover designer, exhibiting covers at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. An adventurous and talented botanical watercolorist, she journeyed west five times between 1909 and 1914 to collect and draw blossoms as part of her efforts to illustrate Field Book of Western Wild Flowers (1915). She found this lilac clematis in 1909 near Emerald Lake in the Canadian Rockies. The related album contains a significant group of Armstrong’s watercolors and was given to the Museum by family descendants in 2010.
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