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10 Facts About Katharine Saunders

1.

Katharine Saunders was a British-born Colony of Natal botanical illustrator, the sixth of seven children of the Revd Canon Charles Apthorp Wheelwright and Anna Hubbard of Tansor, Northamptonshire.

2.

Katharine Saunders grew up in a vast Tudor-style rectory in Tansor.

3.

Katharine Saunders was coached in music from the age of five and was a competent watercolour painter by the age of six.

4.

Katharine Saunders's elder brother Horatio, who was a naturalist, traveller and writer, supported her in this venture.

5.

Katharine Saunders eked out a living for herself and her child by producing paintings of flowers.

6.

The Katharine Saunders' first home was a sprawling thatched building with shady verandahs overlooking the Tongaat River and whimsically named 'The House by the Drift'.

7.

Katharine Saunders herself travelled and painted fairly extensively through the Transvaal and Swaziland, visiting her daughter who had settled in Johannesburg and her son, Charles, in Eshowe.

8.

Katharine Saunders donated a selection of her paintings to the Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg in 1889.

9.

Katharine Saunders's pressed specimens are at Kew and the herbarium of Trinity College, Dublin.

10.

Katharine Saunders sent some 426 specimens to Kew during the period 1881 to 1889 - about 16 of these were named after her though most were later regarded as synonyms.