Margaret Meen
{{short description|British painter}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Margaret Meen
| birth_date = November or December 1751
| birth_place = Bungay, Suffolk
| death_date = January 1834 (aged 82)
| death_place = Bath, Somerset
| nationality = British
}}
Margaret Meen (1751-1834) was an English watercolour painter. Known for botanical illustrations (often painted on vellum), Margaret Meen taught this art to Queen Charlotte and her daughters; as well as to the four daughters (and several grand daughters) of Joshua Smith (English politician), MP.[https://www.academia.edu/11307303/Margaret_Meen_A_Life_in_Four_Letters Margaret Meen: A Life in Four Letters, by Kelly M. McDonald]
Life
File:Princess Elizabeth after Margaret Meen - A group of flowers in a jar and a bird's nest.jpg
The daughter of Henry and Sarah Meen, Margaret was born in Bungay,[https://www.kingandmcgaw.com/prints/margaret-meen/rubus-fruticosus-426279#426279::media:1_size:327,400 Rubus fruticosus Art Print by Margaret Meen at King & McGaw] Retrieved 2016-10-22 Suffolk or more likely in Harleston, Norfolk, where she was baptised in December 1751.[https://ancestry.co.uk Ancestry] She moved to London to teach drawing flowers and insects in 1770.
She had good connections as her elder brother, Henry Meen, was a noted cleric.{{Citation |last=Simpkiss |first=Jane |title=Meen, Margaret (bap. 1751, d. 1834), artist and botanical illustrator |date=2024-05-09 |work=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-90000382483 |access-date=2024-11-06 |publisher=Oxford University Press |language=en |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000382483 |isbn=978-0-19-861412-8|url-access=subscription }} She earned money as a teacher of drawing. Her students included the four daughters of the member of parliament for Devizes, Joshua Smith, in the 1780s. She showed her work as a botanist at the Royal Academy and the Royal Watercolour Society, and published Exotic plants from the Royal Gardens at Kew in 1790, which she dedicated to Queen Charlotte. A large collection of work is now part of the Kew Herbarium, with further botanicals by Margaret Meen in the collections of The Vyne (National Trust) and the Royal Horticultural Society (London).[https://www.academia.edu/11307303/Margaret_Meen_A_Life_in_Four_Letters Margaret Meen: A Life in Four Letters, by Kelly M. McDonald]
Her painting A group of flowers in a jar and a bird's nest, which she painted in 1806 for Princess Elizabeth, was included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World.[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39000/39000-h/39000-h.htm Women painters of the world, from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day], by Walter Shaw Sparrow, The Art and Life Library, Hodder & Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row, London, 1905
Margaret Meen continued teaching, at schools and in homes of private pupils, throughout the 1820s. She died in Bath, her burial registered in the parish of Walcot, Somerset on 9 January 1834. Her probated will (28 January 1834) appears listed as "Will of Margaret Meen, Spinster of Loughton, Essex"[https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D398194 National Archives Wills] online at The National Archives.
References
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External links
- [http://www.artnet.com/artists/margaret-meen/past-auction-results Margaret Meen] on artnet
- [http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/results?ImagesOnly=True&Places=22d93238fffffe0702132e04a12f4983&Collections=22d92f79fffffe0702132e044e454157&Sort=maker The Vyne], Hampshire, National Trust
- [https://smithandgosling.wordpress.com/ Two Teens in the Time of Austen], family history for Emma Austen Leigh, grand daughter of Joshua Smith MP
{{Commons category|Margaret Meen}}
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Category:19th-century British painters
Category:British watercolourists