Mary Foley Benson research (UC Davis, 2022-23)

Mary Foley Benson was a scientific illustrator who worked at UC Davis and whose work I had a chance to explore from Spring Quarter 2022. During my internship, I worked mostly with special collections at and the Bohart Museum of Entomology and the Shields Library. This semi-detective work required going through archives, corresponding with other institutions, making interviews and closely looking at artworks in order to piece together a better picture of this remarkable artist and person. More about this research process you can read on Society for Social Studies of Science’s blog.

To make my findings known, I had two lectures, led several museum tours, co-authored a pop-up exhibition, made a Wikipedia page about her, wrote a museum newsletter entry and hopefully will have an article published this year. More information about these activities you can find below. I hope this will inspire more future interest in her work.

I would like to thank the Bohart museum staff, especially director Lynn Kimsey, who got me into Mary’s work and supported wholeheartedly the whole research, and professor Michael Yonan for his unquestioning support.

*January 5, 1926. Miss Mary C. Foley, artist at Department of Agriculture. National Photo Company Collection glass negative.*

From Bohart Museum Society’s Winter 2023 Newsletter No. 93:

Plants, Insects and Art: Mary Foley Benson’s Scientific Illustrations

“She has been described by her neighbors as the only person who grows vegetables for bugs. Her back yard has a tomato crop, but the tomatoes are grown for insect, rather than human, consumption.” This is how a journalist in 1972 referred to Mary Foley Benson (1905-1992), a soon-to-become retired entomological illustrator. She used to sketch insects and plants from live and fresh specimens, creating watercolors and lithographs with an exquisite sense of detail and beauty. UC Davis has more than 100 of her artworks shared between the Shield’s library’s special collections and the Bohart Museum.

Probably the best known of these is the series was made for Dr. Howard L. McKenzie’s 1967 book “Mealybugs of California with Taxonomy, Biology and Control of North American Species”. Mary Foley Benson illustrated the book jacket and 21 large color
illustrations depicting a variety of mealybugs set in their natural surroundings, depicting host plants, plant damage, and their wider habitat. According to Dr. Lynn Kimsey, “mealybugs never looked so attractive.“ One illustration on display in Department of Entomology & Nematology’s conference room at Briggs Hall, depicts cactus mealybug (Spilococcus cactearum) feasting on Texas Nipple Cactus found at the UC Berkeley’s Botanical Gardens. It is likely that the artist visited all locations depicted in person, just like she worked with live specimens.

She did similar work for Dr. W. Harry Lange, also in the Department of Entomology, which unfortunately remain unpublished, except for two illustrations on rice pests. In the late 60s and early 70s, Dr. Lange planned to publish on agricultural pests and their lifecycles, including the pest’s host plants and habitat. Mary Foley Benson drew about 50 illustrations, from individual insects to complex life cycle scenes. One example of the Alfalfa looper (Autographa californica), shows all stages from eggs and larva to pupae and adult moths on lettuce. These were collected in Davis and Salinas in April 1966 and drawn on a background of a lettuce field, with a water tower, barn and tractor, at the location of Gonzales, Monterey County, and can be found in the collection of the Bohart Museum.

After retirement in 1972, she came back to her primary love, illustrations of plants, this time not damaged by insect pests. While most of the previous work has been done in watercolor, these botanical drawings were often made as lithographs, easily reproducible and accessible to the general public. In fact, this might be the work she is mostly associated with in California. She loved drawing Golden lupine, often in combination with California poppy and Dogface butterfly, a power trio of symbols of the City of Davis (lupine), state flower (poppy) and insects (butterfly). One of the original drawings of Golden lupine can be found in the City of Davis’ hallway, which she donated in 1983, just before the plant was reaffirmed as the official flower of Davis.

Mary Foley Benson was in love with Davis. In a 1983 interview she said: “This is the greatest place in the world for me… I get such support from the people in Davis. They hang my work all over town.” Born in Storm Lake, Iowa, she was a long-term resident of Washington DC area, where she worked for the USDA. After being a pilot during WWII, she moved to California, to Los Angeles. Dr. McKenzie was responsible for her move to Davis, when he offered her a job as senior scientific illustrator in 1964. She stayed in Davis until her death in 1992.

Her work remains in several national archives with limited visibility, but 2022 seems to be a year of change. Forest entomologist Malcolm M. Furniss wrote a biographical article titled “Mary Foley Benson: Master of the Art of Scientific Illustration of Insects and Flowers” earlier this year. Since Spring Quarter 2022, I have been researching her work with an aim to offer several public talks and write an art history article on her two UC Davis series. Her work definitely deserves the overdue analysis and all the attention. It is also just one of many cases of women scientific illustrations from the 20th century, whose work spanning art and science is still understudied, but highly relevant to our times.

Plants, Insects and Art: Mary Foley Benson’s Scientific Illustrations

Aggie Spirit Week event, 15 October 2022, and pop-up exhibition at the Bohart Museum, with Tabatha Yang. Photos by me.