Investigating Maria Sibylla Merian: Hilary Doyle

Cactus Moon Studio is delighted to present Investigating Maria Sibylla Merian, a body of paintings by Massachusetts-based artist Hilary Doyle inspired by the extraordinary life of 17th-century German artist, naturalist and pioneering entomologist, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), opening on October 6, 2026.

Over a series of evocative paintings, Doyle builds a fascinating, dream-like narrative of insights and reimagined moments in Merian’s life, seductively rendered with references to Old Masters, from Fragonard to van Gogh. The focus here is Merian’s life and voyage to the then Dutch colony of Suriname, in 1699, informing years of deep research into the region’s flora and fauna, much of it hitherto undocumented. Later trips were undertaken by her daughter Dorothea. Maria and her two daughters drew and created illustrated books together. The intrepid trio generated significant unprecedented research, taxonomy, etchings and detailed botanical drawings of the country’s plants and animals.

Doyle presents Merian here not as a distant historical subject, but as a vital contemporary force. In Doyle’s paintings, Merian’s life and work emerge from the shadows of history, to reveal a powerful historical narrative, still supremely relevant and inspirational to audiences today. For Maria Sibylla Merian was not only an exceptional artist and entomologist, but also an intrepid traveller, a single woman travelling to some of the remotest parts of the world in pursuit of rare insects and plants. Bourgeois European society regarded this shocking female behaviour with suspicion and hostility. Unconcerned, Merian followed her passions and obsessions regardless of what anyone might think. 

‘Her story is amazing, because she was groundbreaking,’ says Hilary Doyle today. ‘She was so brave. Because she did this all on her own. She was among the first people to seriously study and document butterfly metamorphosis through direct observation, producing books and illustrations that transformed how the natural world could be seen and understood. I just feel like she’s somebody everybody should know - and that nobody knows.’

This dynamic sense of rediscovery and celebration animates the entire exhibition. Doyle came to Merian after a period of making work around ‘excavating goddess histories and working that into contemporary narratives.’ During her reading on historical women artists, she encountered Merian. Something immediately clicked. Not only was Merian’s work as artist and entomologist a towering achievement in the field, but Doyle felt a deeper, more personal resonance with her too.

‘I found all these connections to my life, as a mother of two and a lover of nature’. That personal connection is central to the exhibition. Doyle sees in Merian’s life, many obligations and contradictions that remain unresolved for women today. ‘As an artist and mother of two young children, studying an artist mother of two from three centuries ago,’ Doyle notes, ‘I noticed many similar struggles working mothers still face today. But Merian was incredibly layered. A scientist, researcher, a working mother, all at a time when as a middle-class German woman, she would have been expected only to fulfil domestic roles. She is a symbol of positivity and empowerment for women.’

As Doyle’s research into Merian’s life deepened, further parallels emerged, collapsing the centuries between the two women - societal assumptions about motherhood, the structural lack of support, the pressure to choose between creativity and career and family obligation. In that light, this illuminating of Merian’s life feels not merely admirable but necessary.

In approaching her subject matter, Doyle refrained from basic historical illustration. Rather, she channelled Merian’s spirit, creating scenes that blend research, speculation, symbolism and lived empathy. Some works are based on stories associated with Merian’s life - such as The Stolen Tulip Legend (2024), a whimsical imagining of the neighbour’s tulips she stole as a girl only to evade punishment by making a drawing of them. 

Maria Sibylla Merian: Observing Metamorphosis (2025) imagines the still watches of the night, waiting for a chrysalis to open, something Merian had been doing since the age of 13. Another work, Maria Sibylla Merian: In Flight (2024-25) awash in a swirl of Fragonard-ish exuberance, has Merian searching for rare specimens with her daughter in tow. Marian Sibylla Merian: Pregnant Searching with Cherry Blossom (2024), celebrates her doughtiness in continuing to work, through pregnancy and motherhood.

This mixture of fact and imaginative recovery brings a deliciously exuberant, joyful perspective to the exhibition. Doyle is not simply reconstructing Merian’s world; she is painting its emotional and psychological dimensions.

‘I was imagining Maria and [her daughter] Dorothea,’ she says of Searching (2024), ‘Maybe Dorothea would be holding one of her children, and they’d be looking for insects together.’ This imagining, questioning and wondering how ambition, curiosity, family and risk might cohere within this woman’s life is at the heart of the works.

Not only was Merian’s journey to Suriname in 1699 a groundbreaking act at the time, but her scientific and artistic practice once deep in the forests and jungles also set her apart. Doyle emphasises the fact that unlike many of her contemporaries and indeed, successors, Merian worked from living subjects. This distinction matters deeply. Unlike later natural-history illustrators who often worked from dead or taxidermied specimens, in choosing the frantically tricky method of painting from real life Merian observed transformation as it happened, portraying organisms in their natural environments, a holistic view, rather than an abstracted anatomical diagram. This proves relevant today, when questions about coexistence, fragility and environmental attention feel more pressing than ever. Doyle was struck by Merian's fundamental ethics. ‘She made drawings that documented the life cycles of insects, especially caterpillars and butterflies, on their specific host plants rather than floating on a plain background. People today say she’s the founder of ecology for that reason’.

Doyle’s own paintings echo this holistic sensibility. Flowers, insects, fruit, leaves and animals are not passive embellishments but protagonists. Often, they are dramatically foregrounded, creating what Doyle describes as a perspective akin to ‘a bug’s eye view’. This compositional strategy allows Merian’s own drawings and discoveries to also occasionally appear inside Doyle’s paintings, as if the artist were building contemporary narratives around the visual intelligence of her predecessor. 

Throughout the exhibition, Doyle also reflects on influence, inheritance and historical disappearance. Her work considers how Merian’s imagery fed into later stalwarts of design and decoration, such as Victorian polymath William Morris. Whether as direct influence or broader visual afterlife, the point is clear: women’s contributions often shape culture without recognition. Doyle’s project seeks to reverse that process, restoring Merian not just to visibility but to cultural centrality. ‘My dream,’ Doyle says, ‘is that maybe Merian will get weaved back into the future.’

This exhibition does precisely that. Through paintings of beauty, intelligence and conviction, Doyle returns Maria Sibylla Merian to the wider public’s view and in these vital and compelling paintings, insists that her story is not over.