Margaret Armstrong

1867-1944 American

Capas Art Nouveau e guias florais

Margaret Neilson Armstrong was a 20th-century American designer, illustrator, and author. She is best known for her book covers in the Art Nouveau style. She also wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive guide to wildflowers of the American west, Field Book of Western Wild Flowers (1915). In later life she wrote mystery novels and biographies. Margaret Neilson Armstrong was born on September 24, 1867, in New York City, the daughter of American diplomat and stained glass artist Maitland Armstrong and his wife Helen, who was a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant and a niece of Hamilton Fish. Her six siblings included Helen Maitland Armstrong (1869–1948), who followed in her father's footsteps to become a stained glass artist, and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, a magazine editor. She began her career as a designer in the 1880s, working initially for A.C. McClurg and later for other publishers as well. She designed more than 270 book covers and book bindings, about half of which were for Scribner's. She worked in the Art Nouveau style and favored plant-related motifs, bold colors, gold stamping, and often slightly asymmetrical designs—an unusual combination that helped to distinguish her among her peers. Authors for whom she designed several covers include Frances Hodgson Burnett, Florence L. Barclay, George Washington Cable, Charles Dickens, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry van Dyke, and Myrtle Reed. She has been called "the most productive and accomplished American book designer of the 1890s and early 1900s", and her work is often compared to that of her contemporary Alice Cordelia Morse. Her monogram appears on many covers after 1895; it is a simple 'MA' in upper case with the 'M' slightly overlapping the 'A'. Armstrong reduziu o design de capas de livros por volta de 1913, quando as sobrecapas começaram a ficar na moda, e passou a escrever seus próprios livros. (No entanto, seu estilo característico foi tão bem-sucedido que as editoras passaram a contratar artistas especificamente para imitar seu visual.) Naturalista ávida, a paixão de Armstrong pelas formas naturais refletia seu interesse pela botânica e, em particular, pelas flores silvestres. Durante o período de 1911 a 1914, ela viajou e acampou pelo oeste dos Estados Unidos e pelo Canadá, tornando-se uma das primeiras mulheres a chegar ao fundo do Grand Canyon. Ela descobriu lá várias espécies de flores que ainda não haviam sido identificadas pelos botânicos. Ela detalha essas e muitas outras espécies em seu Field Book of Western Wild Flowers (1915). Com suas 550 ilustrações (48 das quais em cores), seu Field Book é considerado o primeiro guia abrangente sobre o assunto. Em seus sessenta e setenta anos, ela escreveu três romances de mistério elogiados pela crítica—Murder in Stained Glass (1939), The Man with No Face (1940) e The Blue Santo Murder Mystery (1941)—e duas biografias, Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian (1938) e Trelawny: A Man's Life (1940). Ela também completou as memórias de seu pai. Ela morreu em Nova York em 1944.