Sarah Drake

Biography

Born on July 24, 1803, Drake came from the same area of Norfolk as the London University botanist John Lindley and went to school with Lindley's sister Anne. In 1830 "Ducky" (as she became known) moved into the Lindley home at Acton Green in London. She appears to have had a number of roles in the Lindley home, including that of governess, but eventually she took up botanical art, gradually taking over from Lindley the illustration of his botanical publications. She created illustrations for his Sertum Orchidaceae, for example, as well as over 1000 illustrations for the horticultural magazine Edwards's Botanical Register, which Lindley edited from 1829 to 1847. More than 300 of these drawing were of orchids and Lindley named the Western Australian orchid genus Drakaea in her honour.

Drake is perhaps best known for her collaboration with Augusta Innes Withers on the drawings for the monumental Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala by James Bateman. She also contributed some illustrations to Nathaniel Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae Rariores.

Drake's career ended with the Botanical Register went out of business in 1847. She returned to Norfolk to care for elderly relatives and moved in with her uncle, Daniel Drake. In 1852 she married John Sutton Hastings, a wealthy farmer. She died on July 9, 1857, putatively from diabetes, but it has been speculated that she may have suffered from cumulative poisoning from her painting materials.