Orra White Hitchcock: An Amherst Woman of Art and Science

Orra White Hitchcock brings to light the little-known art of one of the Connecticut River Valley’s earliest female artists and a leading scientific illustrator of her generation, from her lyrical images of flora, to her massive classroom wall charts and her picturesque lithographs of the Connecticut and Deerfield Rivers. Robert L. Herbert and Daria D’Arienzo illuminate Hitchcock’s life and art and reveal new discoveries and previously unknown drawings. Additionally, Elizabeth Farnsworth contributes an analysis of Hitchcock’s watercolors of flowers and grasses from the vantage point of her own work as a botanical illustrator, while geologist Tekla Harms describes how the artist’s large classroom drawings supplemented observable phenomena with representations of unseen geological structures crucial to geologic education. This generously illustrated catalogue, produced in conjunction with an exhibition at Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum, celebrates the memorable art of a gifted American woman.

Catalog complements the exhibit at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts between January 28–May 29, 2011