Sarah Drake was born in Skeyton on 24 July 1803, the same area of Norfolk as the London University botanist John Lindley and went to school with Lindley's sister Anne. As a young woman, she went to Paris, where she probably studied painting as was expected of young women of the day. In 1830 "Ducky" 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 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 drawings were of orchids and Lindley named the Western Australianorchid genus Drakaea in her honour. Drake is perhaps best known for her collaboration with Augusta Withers on the drawings for the monumental Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala by James Bateman, but she also contributed to Lindley's book, , Nathaniel Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae Rariores, John Forbes Royle's Illustrations of the botany and other branches of the natural history of the Himalayan Mountains and to The Botany of HMS Sulphur. She did not travel abroad and probably went no further than Kew Gardens, the Lindley home or to Loddiges nursery, which put on a display of orchids especially for her. Drake's career ended when 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, from diabetes, but it has been speculated that she may have suffered from cumulative poisoning from her painting materials. In 2000 a memorial plaque commemorating her work was unveiled at the parish church where she is buried.
Books and magazines which contained her illustrations
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Bateman, J. The Orchidology of Mexico and Guatemala London
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Wallich, N. Plantae Asiaticae Rariores
J. Forbes Boyle
Edwards's Botanical Register
Honours
named the Western Australian orchid genus, Drakaea, to honour her.
