Dwight Ripley: From the New York School to Gilia ripleyi Barneby (and many more)

Aquilegia barnebyi Munz collected by Ripley and Barneby in Piceance Creek, 3 miles NW of Rio Blanco.

I had written previously about Rupert Barneby and his lifelong partner, Dwight Ripley. The article I was drawing on for that post was the following:

• Crase, Douglas (2001). Ruperti Imagines: A Portrait of Rupert Barneby. Brittonia, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan. – Mar., 2001), pp. 1-40.  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2666532

The internet being such a social environment arranged it so Mr. Crase, the author of the above article, contacted me and inspired me to write this post, focusing on the extraordinarily talented Dwight Ripley. The Tibor de Nagy Gallery on 724 Fifth Avenue in New York City is hosting an exhibition on the Travel Posters and Language Panels of Ripley that I encourage you all to attend should you living in or passing through New York City and appreciate botanically themed art (and travel). Many thanks for Mr. Crase for providing this information.

onstellation! 1968 ink and colored pencil on paper 11 x 14 inches, from the Tibor de Nagy Gallery website

So, who was this Dwight Ripley? I will let the Tibor de Nagy website do the talking:

Dwight Ripley was a British born artist, whose work was the subject of five solo exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy starting in 1951. A polymath, Ripley was a serious botanist, the author of a volume of poetry, and spoke fifteen languages. However, it was for his artwork that he was most recognized. Six of his drawings were included in an exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s legendary gallery Art of This Century.

Ripley’s “Travel Posters” and “Language Panels”– two series of drawings made in 1962 and 1968, the last decade of his life — combine inventive graphic clarity with allusive puns based on popular art forms. In his “Travel Posters,” the enticing scenery has been configured from the scientific names of indigenous plants, but spun in a cursive web that suggests the wandering line of Surrealist or abstract art. In the “Language Panels,” his etymologically-driven idea of the comic strip, the drawings have been divided into mysterious quadrants that imply narratives of both discovery and danger. Colorful, unusual, and pioneering in their steadfast insistence on colored pencil, the drawings are prescient of the epistemological savvy and environmental awareness that came to characterize the era we still recognize as our own.

Mr. Crase has written another article that I greatly enjoyed, in this instance on “Dwight Ripley called “Unlikely Angel: Dwight Ripley and the New York School“. It is well worth a read to learn more about this talented man and his place within the New York School. For our botanical purposes, I will rely on the New York Botanical Garden to stress his importance to the field of plant identification

Harry Dwight Dillon Ripley, noted linguist, plantsman, artist and author, was born in London on October 23, 1908. He began his plant explorations in the 1920s in Northern Africa and Spain with Rupert Barneby whom he met at Harrow where they both attended school. They collected plants to grow at the Spinney, Ripley’s home in Sussex, as well as specimens for herbaria. The 1,138 species in their garden are identified in A List of Plants Cultivated or Native at the Spinney, Waldron, Sussex (1939). In 1939, the two men moved to California and traveled extensively in Mexico and the western United States, again collecting plants for their garden and for herbaria. Ripley wrote numerous articles about these collecting trips that were originally published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society (U.K.). Excerpts are reprinted in Impressions of Nevada: the countryside and some of the plants as seen through the eyes of an Englishman, an occasional paper of the Northern Nevada Native Plant Society (1978). Ripley and Barneby moved to New York in 1943 and they did not return to Sussex. Their plant collection at the Spinney was auctioned in 1951 with most of the rarities going to botanic gardens at Cambridge and Kew.

As proof of his impact to plant science as well as lifelong professional collaboration with his partner, Rupert Barneby, Index Kewensislists six species named after Ripley: Cymopterus ripleyi, Aliciella ripleyi, Astragalus ripleyi, Eriogonum ripleyi, Omphalodes ripleyana and Senna ripleyi. The first three of these he co-discovered with Barneby. A beautiful example of Gilia ripleyi Barneby can be seen below, a specimen Ripley and Barneby collected in the United States in 1941. The meticulous care of the specimen composition makes a nice bridge (in my estimation) between Ripley the botanist and Ripley the artist. Many thanks again to Mr. Crase for uncovering such a nice story. If you happen to be in New York City, be sure to check out the exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Gilia ripleyi Barneby