Artists Represented in the Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations

Close this window to return to the list of artists.

Deborah Griscom Passmore (1840-1911) was born in Pennsylvania. She received formal art training in Philadelphia and Europe, and then opened a studio in Washington, D.C., reportedly at the instigation of W. W. Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She was active as an illustrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1892 to 1909 preparing pomological watercolors. These watercolors of new fruit introductions were used to illustrate a series of articles by William A. Taylor entitled "Promising new fruits" that appeared from 1902 to 1913 in the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture. (Watercolors were an especially important means of illustrating color before the widespread commercial use of color photography).

Passmore exhibited paintings at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (1976) and at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893). Evidently inspired by the botanical paintings of Marianne North at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Passmore began illustrating "Wildflowers of North America." This work was never published and is preserved as a folio of watercolors at the National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Maryland. The pomological watercolors mentioned above are now in the collection of the U.S. National Arboretum. In addition, a few watercolors of Cactaceae prepared in 1905 and 1907 and published posthumously in Britton and Rose's The Cactaceae (1919-1923), are in the collection of the Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution.

Passmore died in Washington, D.C. in 1911.

Examples of illustrations by Deborah Griscom Passmore in our catalog.

Neomammillaria mystax

Homalocephala texensis

Echinofossulocactus violaciflorus

View all illustrations in the catalog by Deborah Griscom Passmore.