Mary McMurtrie

MARY McMURTRIE was a remarkable woman who lived life to the full.  Mary was born in Skene, Aberdeenshire, and spent her life in North East Scotland. She was one of the first female students at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, and, throughout her life, she combined her interest in painting with her love of flowers. For over forty years she ran a nursery specialising in alpines and old garden flowers. She also had a remarkable knowledge of wild flowers. She published a number of beautifully illustrated books including Scots Roses (1995) and Scottish Wild Flowers (2001). She always painted directly from life, using watercolours to capture the essence of her subjects. In Scotland on Sunday, Roger Banks wrote "she is one of the best flower painters working today: where lesser illustrators get lost in botanical minutiae she never loses sight of a flower’s whole pictorial appeal".  She continued to paint until the last few weeks of her life. Mary McMurtrie died, after a short illness, in November 2003, aged 101.

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