Katharine Saunders

Katharine Saunders (1824–1901) was a British-born South African botanical illustrator, the sixth of seven children of the Revd Canon Charles Apthorp Wheelwright and Anna Hubbard of Tansor, Northamptonshire. Katharine grew up in a vast Tudor-style rectory in Tansor. She was coached in music from the age of five and was a competent watercolour painter by the age of six. At the age of 19 she was sent to the Continent to study languages and drawing. Her elder brother Horatio, who was a naturalist, traveller and writer, supported her in this venture. Her older sister, Anna, was already living in Düsseldorf, having been banished in disgrace after falling pregnant. She eked out a living for herself and her child by producing paintings of flowers. In all Katharine spent seven years abroad, acquiring proficiency in drawing and fluency in French, German and Flemish. During a visit to Düsseldorf she met Mauritian-born James Renault Saunders (1818-1892) and married him the following year at the British Embassy in Brussels. She and her new husband and their daughter sailed to South Africa in 1854 aboard the East Indiaman 'Hotspur' and arrived in Cape Town on 12 September 1854, spending three weeks there before sailing for Durban where they arrived on 23 October 1854. They settled on the sugarcane farm, 'Tongaat Estate' north of Durban, where her husband was at first manager and later the owner. Having settled in, complete with a grand piano, Katharine started painting plants. The Saunders' first home was a sprawling thatched building with shady verandahs overlooking the Tongaat River and whimsically named 'The House by the Drift'. Her interest in plants was furthered by the Scots horticulturalist, Mark McKen, who worked on the sugarcane farm in a temporary capacity and later resumed his curatorship of the Durban Botanic Gardens. McKen fixed a variety of Natal orchids to trees in her garden, sparking in her a lifelong interest in orchids. By the 1870s her growing family and her husband's thriving career saw them occupying 'Tongaat House' which became a convenient meeting-place for botanists of the area. Katharine's enthusiasm for painting, botany and conservation generated the interest which held the groups together.