Dagny Tande Lid

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Dagny Tande Lid was a Norwegian painter and illustrator with international renown.

She was born May 25, 1903 in Nissedal parish in Telemark. She died in Oslo in 1998. Her work as illustrator of scientific and popular works of botany has won great acclaim. She worked for many years as illustrator for her husband, Johannes Lid, who for many years wrote floras for Norway, Sweden and Finland. She is also represented in severalof Erling Porsild's floras, e.g. "Rocky Mountain Wild Flowers" from 1974, as well as in some Icelandic floras by Áskell Löve, Rasmussen's Føroya flora, Olaf I. Rønning's Svalbards flora, Eric Hultén's Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Territories and Nicolas Polunin's Circumpolar Arctic Flora.

[edit] Her Work

Lid is best known for her illustrations for the Norwegian Mountain Flora (Fjellflora), which has been issued in 325 000 copies since the first printing in 1952. The text was written by Olav Gjærevoll, Norwegian botanist and politician, and the book has been translated into several languages, including English, German, Swedish and Finnish.

From 1959 until the early 1980s she made the illustrations for ten Norwegain stamps with flowers. They rank among Norway's most popular stamps issued. Her Mountain Flora illustrations were also printed on China for cups and plates.

Her style is marked by a great sense of detail combined with a clarity, which some critics claim has made her illustrations like comic book illustrations. Some will see similarities between her work with flowers and the Belgian comic book artist, Hergé, in the ligne claire style and the interest in accuracy and detail.

However, her personal style has been a pattern for many amateur botanists, and her work has contributed to the growth in interest in botany, particularly in Norway's mountain regions.

She wrote several collections of poems, illustrated by herself, in her later years. In 1987 her autobiography, Mitt liv (My life) was issued, and in 1974 a biographical tribute to her marriage to Johannes Lid, Lykken mellom to mennesker.