Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 December 19

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December 19

Number of or list of artists of the Pomological Watercolor Collection

Hi, and hope you're doing well! This would be a straightforward question if I didn't have conflicting information. As of today, the official USDA Pomological Watercolors site says "about 21 artists". But older sources give different numbers: a September 2000 USDA publication says "about 50", an August 2011 Smithsonian piece "some 65".

Since these images are public domain and in Commons (commons:Category:USDA Pomological Watercolors), is there any way we could pull a list of artists? Perhaps we can see if some artists changed the way they signed their paintings and got double-counted before the collection was unpaywalled around 2015. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 05:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I found this blog which repeats the number of 65 artists but also says:

The USDA's top 3 artists were Deborah Griscom Passmore, Amanda Almira Newton (1860-1943) and Mary Daisy Arnold (1873-1955), who each painted over 1,000 watercolours. Between them, they were responsible for over half the collection. Alansplodge (talk) 15:33, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Bingo! From Huntia Volume 4 in January 1982: White, J. J., & Neumann, E. A. The Collection of Pomological Watercolors at the U.S. National Arboretum, pp. 103-123, Appendix I (p. 110 or 10/24 of the pdf) Some U.S.D.A. Artists, Late 19th - Early 20th Century.

There are (by my count) 64 named artists and a further 10 known only by their initials, together with the caveat; "No doubt the list is incomplete" as apparently some works are unsigned. Alansplodge (talk) 15:47, 19 December 2023 (UTC)