James Marion Shull — USDA Pomological Watercolors

35 restored plates, 1911–1940, from the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — with a biography from the archival record.

James Marion Shull (1872–1948) was an American botanical artist, botanist and plant breeder. Born in Clark County, Ohio, to Harrison and Catherine Ryman Shull, he was the elder brother of the geneticist George Harrison Shull and the plant physiologist Charles Albert Shull. He worked in Washington as a dendrological illustrator for the U.S. Forest Service (1907–1909), then for the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry as botanical artist (1909–1925) and associate botanist (1925–1942). Over those decades he painted more than 750 watercolours now in the Pomological Watercolor Collection — nuts, citrus, figs, pineapples, apples and many diseased specimens — with plates dated from 1905 to 1941.

Painting early iris hybrids led him to breeding: from his garden in Chevy Chase, Maryland, he introduced about two dozen irises between 1920 and 1937, among them ‘Morning Splendor’, which won the Garden Club of America’s medal in 1926, and he received the American Iris Society’s Distinguished Service Medal. His book Rainbow Fragments: A Garden Book of the Iris (1931) carries eight of his own colour plates. He also illustrated for Country Life and the Ladies’ Home Journal, and died at home in Chevy Chase on 1 September 1948.

The plates

Every plate in our restored set credited to James Marion Shull, by fruit then variety. Each has its own anchor (for example #doyle-apple). This is our holding, not the painter’s complete output; the National Agricultural Library holds the rest.

Fruit	Variety	Year	Plate
Apple	Doyle	1935
Apple	Maiden Blush	1918
Apple	Newtown	1913
Avocado	Waldin	1937
Blueberry	Atlantic	1940
Blueberry	Brooks	1940
Blueberry	Catawba	1940
Blueberry	Redskin	1940
Blueberry	Stanley	1940
Blueberry	Weymouth	1940
Cherry	Garibaldi	1935
Cherry	St. Medard	1939
Gooseberry	Poorman	1940
Grape	Beta	—
Grape	Champion	—
Grape	Cloeta	—
Grapefruit	Pomelo	1919
Lemon	Ponderosa	1917
Mango	Bennett	1912
Mango	Fernandez	1912
Mango	Mulgoba	1912
Orange	Boone Early	1937
Orange	Homosassa	1937
Orange	Jaffa	1937
Orange	Majorca	1937
Peach	Hutchkins	1925
Peach	Smock	1915
Pear	Dixie	1935
Pear	Early Bartlett	1936
Pear	Kieffer Cross	1923
Pear	Pulteney	1937
Plum	Botan	1917
Plum	Hall	—
Pomegranate	Wonderful	1911
Strawberry	Redstar	—

By period

Plates per year (this set)

Sources & citation

• J. Marion Shull — Wikipedia
• James Marion Shull — Database of Scientific Illustrators 1450–1950, University of Stuttgart
• Shull, James Marion — Hunt Institute biographical record
• Shull, J. M. (1931), Rainbow Fragments: A Garden Book of the Iris (Doubleday, Doran)
• White, J. & Neumann, A. (1982), 'The collection of pomological watercolors at the U.S. National Arboretum', Huntia 4(2): 103–124 — Appendix I, 'Some U.S.D.A. artists'
• Pomological Watercolor Collection — Wikipedia (per-artist counts, citing the National Agricultural Library)
• Watercolor paintings by James Marion Shull — Wikimedia Commons (the NAL digitisation)
• USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — National Agricultural Library (the originals, with catalogue records)
• USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — finding aid (NAL ArchivesSpace MS0184)
• The collection on Wikimedia Commons

The original watercolours are in the public domain. The restorations shown here are Madten’s, at web resolution. 5 plates carry no year on the record. To cite this page: Madten, “James Marion Shull — USDA Pomological Watercolors,” https://www.madten.com/reference/j-marion-shull-usda-watercolors, 2026-10-29.