Marianne Fannin

Marianne Fannin was born in Dublin in 1845, but she became a leading South African botanical artist after her family moved to the Cape Colony when she was an infant. Encouraged by her brother George to study local orchids and milkweeds, she painted detailed flower albums and sent illustrations to Trinity College, where William Henry Harvey named an orchid in her honour. She lived through the siege of Pretoria, helped found a girls' school, and died in 1938 at the age of ninety-three.