It is with great pleasure that the University of Mary Washington Galleries presents the American wildlife lithographs of Maryrose Wampler. This online exhibition explores nature scenes captured by Maryrose in her innovative watercolor technique. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During her life, Maryrose Wampler (1937-2017) was an acclaimed botanical artist. She began her career as a landscape painter, working largely in oil paint. Over time she transitioned to watercolor where she created a technique that allowed her to achieve saturated colors and lifelike detail.

Maryrose’s talent earned her a position with Nature House Inc. in 1974. She worked with the company until the early 1980s. During that time, she embarked on a journey to complete thirty collector lithographs based on original watercolor paintings featuring America’s flora and fauna. The limited collection was printed 5,000 times.

For this exhibition, we selected twenty Nature House lithographs from our permanent collection to share with the public. Each work is based on a watercolor completed by Maryrose during her travels across the country where she captured a range of state flowers and animals in their natural habitats. Each composition is presented as a cross-section of nature, wherein Wampler focused on the relationships between flora and fauna and natural processes of growth and decay.

Each lithograph is accompanied by a written passage completed by Maryrose’s husband, Fred Wampler, who often joined her on her quest to capture these scenes. This exhibition would not have been possible without the help of our UMWG interns Emily Harvey, Michelle Zillioux, and Tanner Herndon. We would like to thank you for all of your hard work during this trying semester.  

 

-Alyssa Hughes, Collections Manager & Sarah Lapp, Exhibitions Coordinator