Ellis Rowan KilleenMarian Ellis Rowan nee Ryan was born in Melbourne on 30 July 1848, the eldest of seven children of pioneering parents, Charles and Marian Ryan. Charles Ryan leased Killeen Station at Longwood, near the Strathbogie Ranges, where the young Ellis Rowan spent her early childhood. In 1853 the family moved to Melbourne. Ellis attended Miss Murphy’s refined school, taking subjects considered essential for the education of a young Victorian lady: scripture, French, English, history, singing, the art of embroidery, lace-making and painting in watercolour. From an early age she was known as Ellis, as much to distinguish her from her mother, Marian, as to pay tribute to her Irish grandmother (Charles Ryan’s mother), Ellis Agar Hartley, the illegitimate child of King George IV and the Countess of Brandon. Painted screen c.1890In 1869, aged 21, Rowan made her first trip abroad, basing herself in England for a year. Although it has been said that she made this visit to England ‘with the intention of taking lessons in painting’, she later denied it. Whether she took lessons or not, it is clear that she had been busy honing her skills in the fashionable pastime of flower painting for, on her return, ‘Miss Ellis Ryan’ won a bronze medal for a screen, with four panels of Australian wildflowers, at the 1872 Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne. Mount MacedonWhatever her botanical interests had been, they developed rapidly when her father, a keen botanist himself, bought 26 acres on Mount Macedon and built what was to become, for both him and Ellis, their favourite home and final resting place. Derriweit Heights was acclaimed as one of the finest homes in the nation and the garden became internationally famous, particularly among botanists and horticulturists. Ferdinand von Mueller, the Victorian Government Botanist, advised on exotic plants from around the world, and the garden layout was designed by W.R. Guilfoyle. Through her father’s collaboration with von Mueller in the choice of plants for the garden, Rowan was invited to contribute botanical studies for his comprehensive collection on Australian flora. Ferdinand von MuellerIt is not known precisely when Rowan started submitting her works to him, but von Mueller’s bold handwriting appears on the back of many of her pictures, identifying the subjects in botanical Latin. ‘The Baron’, as he was known, encouraged her work and gave her useful introductions to key people around the world. They kept in touch until his death in 1896. An Officer’s Wife In June 1873 Ellis Ryan became engaged to Captain Frederic Charles Rowan, an officer in the British Army. Frederic Rowan had spent several years in England undergoing facial reconstruction after being wounded in the New Zealand Maori Wars before returning, via Melbourne, to become Sub-Inspector for the Constabulary of Armed Forces in New Zealand. Four months after meeting they celebrated their marriage at the Ryan family home in Richmond, before settling in New Zealand at Pukearuhe on the North Island. Metrosideros sp. [New Zealand Christmas Bush] c.1893 Living as an officer’s wife, isolated from friends and family, Rowan found the domesticity of married life ‘boring’; but, ever resourceful, and under her husband’s exacting but encouraging eye, she applied herself to painting local wildflowers. I was suddenly cut off from all social pleasures and for the first time I was thrown entirely on my own resources … yet these solitudes in which for months at a time we never saw a strange face, are among the very happiest of my recollections… —Ellis Rowan, 1912 [Ellis Rowan and her son Eric (Puck) Rowan] c.1886In January 1875 Rowan returned to Derriweit Heights in Macedon, where she painted for six months while awaiting the birth of her only child, Frederic Charles Eric Elliott Rowan, known simply as Puck. Following the birth, Rowan returned to New Zealand for the next three years before moving to the ‘marvellous Melbourne’ of 1878 with her husband. In the following years she accompanied him on his business trips around Australia, taking the opportunity to paint indigenous flowers wherever she could. The task which I undertook at first to please him, soon became my greatest interest and unfailing source of pleasure. —Ellis Rowan, 1912 Orchids 1880On her initial trips to Adelaide and Western Australia, Ellis painted delicate bouquets of mixed wildflowers, which she exhibited for the first time under her married name, ‘Mrs F.C. Rowan’, at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879, to win a silver medal. During one of these trips in 1880, she also met the lone English painter, Marianne North, at Albany on the south coast of Western Australia. I became her devoted admirer, and she became the pioneer of my ambition. —Ellis Rowan, 1905 North was equally fascinated by Rowan: Marianne NorthMrs Rowan [painted] ... most exquisitely in a peculiar way of her own on gray paper. She was a very pretty fairy-like woman, always over-dressed, and afraid to go out of the house because people stared at her. I admired her for her genius and prettiness; she was like a charming spoiled child. — H. Vellacott ed., Some Recollections of a Happy Life: Marianne North in Australia and New Zealand, p. 66 She inspired Rowan with the notion of freedom to travel wherever and whenever she could, not to mention ideas about writing of her adventures and also of how to house and promote her works for posterity. Tree Orchid and Forest (Dendrobium atroviolaceum) c.1890–1892 Although there is no record, North seems to have encouraged Rowan in the technique of oil painting and given her ideas about placing flowers in their natural habitat—to show surrounding vegetation in a landscape background with atmospheric effects such as a brooding storm or a setting sun. Like many botanical painters at the time, she was inspired by Robert Thornton’s famous florilegium, The Temple of Flora (1799–1807), which encouraged artists to travel and depict exotic flora in Arcadian settings, instead of academic illustrations showing root structure, seeds, leaves and flowers on a plain background. In March 1883, Rowan and her sister Blanche Ryan travelled to England via India, where she painted in the Himalayan foothills. That year she won gold medals in Amsterdam, St Petersburg and Calcutta. [Gymea Lily (Doryanthes excelsa)] c.1892All in all, the 1880s was a highly productive decade for Ellis Rowan: not only did she paint a number of rare species for von Mueller’s classification but, with a growing sense of commercialism, she made several versions of her more popular subjects for sale in exhibitions. During this time over 100 engravings of her flowers and scenes were published, her watercolours became bolder in colour and presentation, and she began to paint in oils. Wild Tropical Jungle Jungle on the Pioneer RiverScarlet, yellow-eyed dragonflies skimmed over its surface, while presently a great butterfly tremulously fluttered past, and the sunlight, catching the metallic lustre of its wings, changed them to every rainbow hue. —Ellis Rowan, 1905 By 1888 Ellis Rowan had become the most recognised painter in Australia and was rapidly becoming a household name. That year she was awarded first place for Chrysanthemums and second place for Marguerites in the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. Although they were large, competent oil paintings—a medium in which she had not exhibited before—there was a storm of protest from her male rivals. Rowan had produced these oil paintings during the winter of 1887, when she had made the first of six trips to Queensland. Overwhelmedby the luscious colour and succulence of the tropical vegetation, she did some of her best massed compositions. Albizzia vaillantii 1887Rowan returned to the tropical warmth of Queensland during the winter months of 1891 and 1892, claiming a need to escape Melbourne’s winters for the sake of her health. She took Puck with her for a few weeks on the first trip. Captivated by the variety of the lush tropical vegetation, she sent 65 paintings back to Ferdinand von Mueller for identification. According to the records of these trips she visited Normanby, Rockhampton, Mount Morgan, Mackay, Thursday Island, Cape York, Cooktown, Somerset, Murray Island, Jervis Island, Cairns, Hambledon, Muldiva, Chillagoe Caves, Barron Falls, Myola and Herberton (J. McKay,Ellis Rowan: A Flower-Hunter in Queensland, p. 9–12). Suspense ‘My first walk in the wild tropical jungle … I cannot forget. I entered, sketchbook in hand, by a narrow little pathway, probably made by an alligator. I kicked, as I thought, a grey stick aside—it was a snake, and quick as lightning it darted off, while I grew hot and cold in turns …’ —Ellis Rowan, 1905 So began her account of her fascination for the exotic plant and insect life of tropical Queensland. Her vivid descriptions reveal the eye of an artist, while her tales of near disaster satisfied her need for adventure. She suffered bruises, a black eye and the occasional fever, complained of stinging nettles, mosquito bites and sunburn. Amongst other things in her quest, she dangled by ropes over precipices, defied turbulent seas, a bolting horse and a hair-raising trip by rail. A CorroboreeWhile she marvelled at the vegetation and wildlife, she was less than complimentary about the Indigenous people. In exaggerated letters to her husband she suggests the practice of cannibalism, and describes witnessing a corroboree and sexual rituals. At Her Majesty’s Pleasure The Queen has seen your paintings and … was much pleased with them … —Letter to Ellis Rowan from Windsor Castle, signed by Col. John Clerk, 17 May 1895. In 1895 Ellis Rowan embarked on a trip to England, which was to take her away from Australia for 10 years. Through the connections of her younger brother Cecil Ryan, and armed with a large number of paintings, Rowan made contact with royalty and, briefly, the elderly Queen Victoria herself. Asked to leave her pictures behind, Rowan received a letter from Windsor Castle within days of her visit: The Queen has seen your paintings and … was much pleased with them … [and] has kept three. These the Queen will have made into a screen for her own room and there they will prove not only most ornamental but most useful to Her Majesty. —Letter to Ellis Rowan from Windsor Castle, signed by Col. John Clerk, 17 May 1895. Hibiscus heterophyllus [Native Rosella] c.1892The following year, she staged her first solo show outside Australia, exhibiting 100 paintings of Australian wildflowers at the fashionable Dowdeswell Galleries in New Bond Street, Mayfair. A receptive public included the Queen’s cousin, the Ducess of Teck, who bought three paintings for herself. Mrs Rowan’s work is characterised by exquisite purity of tone without feebleness, and the most brilliant colour without harshness—each specimen botanically perfect … created into a lovely picture. The only objection we have is to the names of these wildflowers; it is to us little short of extraordinary that Mrs Rowan can be on terms of familiarity with a ‘Limnanthemum-exaltatumutricularia-didotomo-labillandra. —Sketch, London, 20 May 1896. For the first time since the discovery of gold and infamous reports on convicts or bushrangers like Ned Kelly, the major Australian topic of interest in London was its wildflowers. Not only had Ellis Rowan become a good ambassador for her country, but she sold well, resulting in commissions for murals and oil paintings for prestigious addresses around London. Alice LounsberryFollowing her successes, Rowan set off for a visit to America that lasted more than seven years. In New York, she met the young botanist Alice Lounsberry and together, over four years, they travelled the United States and West Indies, collaborating on three books which became standard texts for botany students: A Guide to the Wildflowers (1899), A Guide to the Trees (1900), and Southern Wildflowers and Trees (1901). What set Rowan apart from other flower painters of the time was her obsessive commitment, ambition and unabashed self-promotion, as well as her individual style and natural artistic flair. Like many of her contemporaries, her work incorporated the Aesthetic Movement—‘art for art’s sake’—a movement that embraced all things decorative, including the painting of screens, murals, designs for porcelain, illustrations for books and magazines, and other creative genres, including writing. It was during the first months of this visit to America that she learned of the deaths of her father and also of her son, Puck, who died tragically, aged 22, in a gaol in Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia. Ellis Rowan with her mother and sistersSometime after hearing the news, she underwent a transformation with experimental surgery on her face. This ‘face-lift’, a new American fad, gave her what one reporter described as ‘the look of a sad monkey in a small childish face’ (Hazzard, p. 104). She not only changed her face, but dyed her hair red with henna, and also reduced her age by ten years, quoting her birth date as 1858 in The American Botanical and Historical Record. Kangaroo paw [Anigozanthos bicolor] 188-?Except for some hyperbolic interviews in the newspapers, her years in America are probably the least documented of her life. After completing her work with Lounsberry, she continued to travel and paint throughout the United States. She held several exhibitions at prestigious venues, including the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago and Clausen’s Gallery, Fifth Ave, New York, where 500 paintings of her wildflowers of the United States, the West Indies, Australia and New Zealand were shown. In 1904 she travelled to the Mexican border and across the Sierras to California for the Panama–Pacific Exposition at Standford University. In spite of a later claim that she wanted her works to remain in Australia, during her stay she made many attempts to find a permanent home for her collection in America. Desert Flowers [Trigger Plant (Stylidium), Morning Flag (Orthrosanthus multiflorus), Fan Flower (Scaevola porocarya), Stackhousia, Chamaescilla, Dampiera] 1880Ellis Rowan visited Western Australia a number of times during her life. It was in Albany in 1880 that Rowan met the English painter Marianne North, and in September 1889 she took part in a painting tour with her flower-painting friend, Margaret Forrest. They went to Boolantha Station, north of Carnarvon and Geraldton, to sketch desert spring flowers. Their joint showing at the Railway Station Reading Room in Perth on 5 November was said to be the first art exhibition ever held in the colony, with ‘some of the loveliest flowers ever seen’. (J. Gooding and Margaret Forrest, Wildflowers of Western Australia. Perth: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 1984, p. 10) Bill Baillie: His Life and AdventuresIn 1906 she visited Perth and once again turned to the more remote parts of Australia as a focus for her work, making a foray north-east to the goldmining area around Kalgoorlie, Laverton and Goongarrie. Despite her incongruous appearance, the local people regarded her with respect, bringing her flowers to paint and, presenting her with a baby bilby or bandicoot rabbit, which she called Bill Baillee. [Christmas Bells (Blandfordia), Flax Lily (Dianella), Haemodorum and Grasses] 1879The ephemeral nature of a newly picked flower meant working quickly andoften onsite. Most of Ellis Rowan’s original watercolour studies on grey paper were executed under extreme difficulties—in the heat and among the flies of the dusty desert or in the humid conditions of a tropical rainforest where snakes and crocodiles lurked. Yet her powers of observation, compositional skill, sense of colour, her deftness with the brush and her natural technique of painting without any preliminary sketches, were without compromise. Pink Everlastings Near Laverton, W.A.At the Australian Natives’ Association Hall in Kalgoorlie she held a successful exhibition including 20 landscapes of the goldmining region (some of which she later used to illustrate her book Bill Baillee) and 130 desert flower paintings, including kangaroo paws, orchids, banksias and the coral creeper. Again she proclaimed her passion for Western Australian flora, stating that some of the most beautiful flowers were found in the sand-hills near Laverton, some 500 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie. However, on return to Perth, she was disappointed when these same paintings, so widely praised in her desert show, were disregarded at an Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in Hay Street—on the grounds that she was not a local artist. She later said: ‘In Western Australia they simply refused to look at my exhibition because so many of the ladies over there paint wildflowers themselves’ (Hazzard, p.106). Rowan had long wanted to visit New Guinea, but her husband and others had rightly cautioned her of its danger. After many years of German occupation, the Melanesian Islands became an Australian protectorate in 1914. This was her great chance.The flower paintings from this trip, however, were nothing like the delicate posies of her youth—they had become overwhelmingly luscious with the image pulled right up to the picture plane and bold colours carried in confidant brush strokes to the edge of the paper. [Amorphophallus Flower and Fruit ] c.1916–1917 Some of the flowers are 24 or 30 inches long, but perhaps the most remarkable—not the most beautiful … is one which is circular in shape, and about 15 inches in diameter. It is dark brown and velvety in appearance, and has a thick fleshy substance under the actual flower, which seems to be in a state of putrefaction. It has a terrible smell—sufficient to poison a whole regiment—but the strange thing is you only smell it between 4 o’clock in the afternoon and 9 o’clock at night. —Ellis Rowan, 1916 [Elliot's Bird of Paradise] c.1917The following year Rowan returned to New Guinea, this time in an attempt to paint every single Bird of Paradise, of which 52 were already known. She stayed at the Madang Mission House, on the north coast. The area was dotted with efficient German copra plantations and mission stations, where trade in birds and butterflies was a common practice. Rowan had sufficient language skills to arrange an exhibition at a local German store, while awaiting travel to the hills. Reluctant to send an elderly white woman alone to these dangerous parts, the resident missionary eventually made arrangements for her to be carried in a hammock by a party of guides. In the manner of most dealers in plumes, the first six birds were brought to her dead. With no intention of painting dead birds, she offered bribes of tobacco to the local ‘head-hunters’ to deliver the specimens alive and housed in cages: The large ones I tucked under my arm and held in that way while I painted them. Some were fierce and hard to hold … I covered the heads of others with handkerchiefs or a table napkin to keep them a little quieter while I was painting the body … —Ellis Rowan, 1918 Rothschild's Bird of Paradise (Astrapia rothschildi) c.1917Living under the most difficult conditions in the tropical heat, inevitably her health broke down and, suffering from malaria and fatigue, she was carried by guides down from the high country to the coast where she was expected to die. With the courage that had seen her through so many intrepid adventures, she rallied and, on return to Australia with over 300 paintings, she went to Macedon to be nursed by her sister Blanche Ryan. In 1918 Rowan exhibited 189 works depicting the flora and fauna encountered during her time in New Guinea at a show at the Fine Arts Society Galleries. Included were paintings of 172 flower species, 40 birds of paradise, 72 fungi, two pictures of coral, a bat, a squirrel and a fish. A critic from the Sun newspaper noted: The artist is proud of her mushroom collection, only one of her specimens being known to science. —Sun, 13 March 1918 [Netted Stinkhorn Fungus, Dictyophora phalloidea or Dictyophora multicolour] c.1916–1917 Rowan herself described the fungi as: Growing, they look like dolls dressed up in fluted lace petticoats … Some are apple green, others mauve; one is black, and another has a scarlet cap. They stand high on long white stems, and the fungus closely resembles exquisite lace. Rowan’s final years were spent campaigning for her works to become a national collection. Despite suffering from the effects of malaria, she continued her work for the Royal Worcester Porcelain Company, receiving accolades for her Bird of Paradise designs which were copied by Sedgley and Philips and the Austin brothers. Twenty–two butterflies c.1918–1920She spent her last winters at her cousin Una Falkiner’s Riverina property, Widgiewa, where she turned her attention to painting a series of butterflies from the famous Dodd collection. I have just finished 2175 butterflies and moths of New Guinea, that means work, as they are difficult to paint. —Ellis Rowan, letter dated 17 June 1918 or 1919 In March 1920 Rowan staged the largest solo exhibition held in Australia to that date, displaying 1000 paintings, including her butterflies at Anthony Hordern’s Gallery, Sydney. With the exception of her butterflies, all works were for sale. Opened by Governor Sir Walter Davidson, he urged that the collection be bought by the nation, a point reiterated in an article ‘A Rare Collection’: … it is exceedingly important that the works of Mrs Rowan should be preserved as a national collection, for their educative value is very great indeed. The New Guinea collection on show … is an amazing achievement for any woman to have accomplished. Ellis Rowan continued to campaign doggedly for her collection to be bought for the Australian public until her death at Macedon on 4 October 1922. A year later, the Rowan Collection Committee, composed of the organisers of the public campaign to purchase her work, was successful in arranging the sale of 947 watercolours to the Commonwealth Government for ?5000.