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She received much of her education at home with sister Mary as director; was a pupil at the Weston [Westtown] boarding school later,
but her art education was the best to be obtained in Philadelphia. There she worked at the School of Design and at the Academy
of Fine Arts. Later a year was spent in Europe seeing what the Royal galleries had to offer, but the best director her hand
ever had was her own strong and original brain. She was essentially a leader and rarely could follow the ideas of others
which did not seem to fit her way of doing and thinking. As soon as she began to paint independently, the repressed color of
generations of Quaker ancestry came forth with a power never equaled in America, and, so far as I know, in the entire world.
Her genius harmonized and made pleasant and agreeable the most antagonistic shades and tones of colors; and especially did she
blend red and yellow until they looked easy and at home with each other; and the great wonder was that every one could not produce
her harmonies. She took infinite pains, and, like Whistler, effaced all trace of labor or effort. Her most difficult
pieces give one the feeling of having been done so easily that one imagines that if one had a brush in hand that is the very
way one would paint.

Her enthusiasm was something splendid. Inspired by the great collections of Mariana North at Kew, England, which she
studied carefully, she began painting the "Wild Flowers of America.” It was her intention to publish these, but the press
of other matters prevented, and it is left a fragment of some one hundred pages. But these are such perfect portraits that a
botanist might identify each one. Infinite pains, unlimited industry, and keen observation enabled her to delineate every mark
so perfectly that they might be taken for the work of a trained botanist. Dr. Edward Lee Greene, who owns the most select
botanical library in America, and has doubtless seen most of the important books of botany in the world, said: "Never in any
book did I see a plate that looked as if the original equaled these; I did not know that they could be painted with such perfection."

She also painted a book, royal size, of lilies and other genera. It contains one hundred plates. The exquisite work is
a marvel of technique. She herself said that she had put as many as a hundred washes on some of the petals in order to get the
strong and velvety effects of the amaryllis. This great work she never expected to part with. She did it for her own pleasure
and satisfaction. It was never signed, nor does it need a signature for any one acquainted with her work.

While working at the School of Design and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia she had the advice and criticism of
Roberts, who painted Niagara Falls at the Corcoran Art Gallery; his brother F. D. B., not quite so famous; Thomas and Edward
Moran; in fact, the criticism of the most noted artists of that time, and under their direction she painted several pictures for
the Centennial in 1876.

After this she was for some years a teacher, and Mr. W. W. Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and his
family being interested in her work, induced her to come to Washington, but before she was well established Mr. Corcoran died.
After this Dr. George Marx saw her work and induced her to come into the Department of Agriculture. She received her appointment August 1, 1892. She painted many of the exhibits of the Department of Agriculture at the World's Columbian Exposition at
Chicago in 1893; and also placed a few of her own pictures in the Art Department of this Exposition.

She has painted some thousands of portraits of fruits for the Division of Pomology and the Bureau of Plant Industry, now considered one of its most valuable assets.

Soon after Miss Passmore became leader of the staff of artists in the Division of Pomology there appeared in the Pomologists' report for 1892 three colored plates--the Eldorado blackberry, a Japanese persimmon, Costata (Diospyros Kaki) and the Buffalo berry (Shepherdia argentea).

In 1894 the leading scientific papers of the Department of Agriculture were segregated and published in a volume called
the Yearbook. In 1901 the Yearbook contained the first paper by W. A. Taylor, entitled "Promising New Fruits," which has
been continued in every Yearbook since that date. It, like all that follow, was illustrated by Miss Passmore in color. This
first paper contained seven plates, the Ingram and McIntosh apples, the Carman peach, the Wickson and Red June plums, the Downing
grape, the Mulgoba mango, and the Advance loquat. That altruistic and greatest of agricultural publications has appeared
annually in an edition of half a million, giving to the world some evidence of her greatness.
        