Margaret Ursula Mee (1909 Chesham, England - November 30, 1988, England), was a botanical artist who specialized in plants from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. She studied art at St. Martin's School of Art, the Centre School of Art, and the Camberwell School of Art in London, England, where she met her future husband, Greville Mee, and received a national diploma in painting and design in 1950.
She moved to Brazil with Greville, her second husband, in 1952 to teach art in the British school of São Paulo. Margaret then became a botanical artist for São Paulo's Instituto de Botanica in 1958, exploring the rainforest and more specifically the Amazonas state from 1964, painting the plants she saw as well as collecting some for later illustrations. Unfortunately Mee died in a car crash, leaving behind about 400 folios of gouache illustrations, 40 sketchbooks, and 15 diaries.
In her honor, the Margaret Mee Amazon Trust was founded to further education and research in Amazonian plant life and conservation, by providing scholarships for Brazilian botanical students and plant illustrators who wish to study in the United Kingdom or conduct field research in Brazil.
In 2004 the Antique Collectors Club in association with The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, published Margaret Mee's Amazon - Diaries of an Artist Explorer (ISBN 1851494545). The cover depicts the Lecythidaceous species Gustavia pulchra and the book itself is a lavishly illustrated account of her expeditions into the Amazonian rainforests over a period of 32 years. Her excitement and passion for the Amazon is clearly evident in her lyrical and articulate notes. Several maps show the routes of her journeys and work sites quite precisely, but the focus of the book is on her detailed diaries kept between 1956 and 1988. The entertaining text is enlivened by drawings, paintings and photographs.
