rowan

Illustrated page from The Queenslander, December 7, 1918, p. 57

from State Library of Queensland

• Vesna Verencevic said:

  Uncover the life of Ellis Rowan Artist and naturalist Marian Ellis Ryan was born in the Port Philip District (now Victoria) on 30 July 1848. She was the eldest child of Charles and Marian Ryan, and was always known by her middle name. Her maternal grandfather was natural history illustrator John Cotton, whose sketchbooks she inherited and are now part of the National Library’s collection. Art and nature were the driving forces in Rowan’s life. She did not formally study natural history, and it is not known how much art tuition she received. Rowan developed an individual style and crafted paintings that celebrated the beauty of her subjects while also demonstrating sophisticated painting skills. An early journal held by the Library includes sketches, notes, and transcriptions of poems, as well as dried plants. It offers insight into Rowan as a young woman, revealing her interest in art, plants, and writing. She first exhibited her work at the Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne in 1872, winning a bronze medal. Her interests were supported by her family and her husband, Frederic Charles Rowan, whom she married in 1873. This support was significant, given the professional limitations Victorian-era women experienced. Her father’s purchase of land near Mount Macedon, Victoria, in 1872 is believed to have contributed to her passion for Australian wildflowers. Time spent living in New Zealand shortly after her marriage also contributed to her decision to paint professionally, as she did not take to domestic life, discussing this period decades later in 1912: ‘I was suddenly cut off from all social pleasures … and here, for the first time, I was thrown entirely on my own resources … here for the first time I commenced … getting as good a collection of Australasian flora as I could.’ Although Rowan is best known for her paintings of Australian wildflowers, she also admired birds and other life forms. This included butterflies and other insects, which often appear in her watercolor paintings. She preferred to work en plein air, which often involved hiking to remote areas where wildflowers grew, wearing the long, delicate dresses sported by fashionable women of the time. Gifted in composing images, Rowan’s work became bolder over the years as her confidence grew. Her paintings, as Patricia Fullerton has observed, also show an awareness of pattern and decorative expression—something promoted by the popular Aesthetic Movement which celebrated the notion of ‘art for art’s sake. Source: www.nla.gov.au/whats/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/birds-p...