Violet Dandridge

Violet Dandridge, was the pseudonym for Serena Katherine Dandridge (1878–1956), she was an American scientific illustrator, painter, naturalist, and suffragist. She was the Smithsonian Institution’s first female scientific illustrator. Early life Serena Katherine Dandridge was born March 15, 1878 in her family home of "Rose Brake" in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and was raised there. Some sources state she was born at "The Bower" the Dandridge family home on the Opequon River near Bower, West Virginia. Her parents were Adam Stephen Dandridge and poet Caroline Dane "Danske" Bedinger Dandridge; she was the eldest of three siblings which included Stephen Hawks and Dorothea Spotswood. Her father had served as a soldier under Stonewall Jackson. She was a descendant of Martha Washington (née Martha Dandridge). In 1896, at the age of 18, she moved to Washington, D.C., to study fine art. The following year she moved back to Shepherdstown after her younger brother unexpectedly died while he was attending university. Her younger sister died in 1907. Career and mid-life Dandridge moved back to Washington, D.C., in 1903 and worked as a scientific illustrator for the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution. She had worked under zoologists Mary Jane Rathbun and Austin Hobart Clark, in order to create images for their publications. In August 1911, Dandridge and Mary Jane Rathbun were conducting research on marine biology and travelled to South Harpswell, Maine, and Woods Hole, Massachusetts. On this trip they were documenting the east coast invertebrates for an exhibition and Dandridge made color sketches of littoral invertebrates, so Rathbun could later transfer the observed colors to the preserved specimens.