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The Flower & Bird Paintings of Ellis Rowan

Memorial portrait of Mrs Ellis Rowan, flower painter and authoress

Sir John Longstaff (1861-1941)
Memorial portrait of Mrs Ellis Rowan, flower painter and authoress [1926]
oil on canvas; 148 x 101 cm
Pictorial Collection R9560

 

On 24 August 1923, the Australian House of Representatives tackled the question: ‘What is art?’ The issue was raised by the then Treasurer, Dr Earle Page, whose particular interest lay in what might be considered as a reasonable price to pay for it. The debate became wide-ranging, forthright and increasingly frank.

The cause of these lively scenes was the Marian Ellis Rowan Collection of over 900 paintings of Australian and New Guinean wildflowers and birds, which had recently been offered to the Australian people by Ellis Rowan’s estate for an asking price of 20 000 pounds.

Some surprising statements were made during the debate. The Treasurer quoted Norman Lindsay, the enthusiastic painter of voluptuous nudes, as condemning Mrs Rowan’s flower paintings as ‘vulgar’. Some of the parliamentarians complained that they would not be getting enough art for their money. Others, such as the Treasurer — passing on Julian Ashton’s view ‘that the purchase by the Federal Government of 900 pictures by any one artist, even if the artist were a Velasquez, would be a grave error’— clearly thought they were getting too much art for their money. Among Mrs Rowan’s supporters were Sir Granville Ryrie, who strongly recommended her as ‘a friend of my family’, and Mr Anstey, who happily likened her to Rembrandt.

Parliament eventually agreed on a price of 5000 pounds for the paintings, and they became the property of the Commonwealth. They are now part of the National Library’s Pictorial Collection, and form the largest collection of Ellis Rowan’s work in public hands. (The Library’s Manuscript Collection also includes Ellis Rowan’s cuttings book at MS 2203; and a number of her letters at MS 2206.)

Like all acquisitions seen with the hindsight of a number of decades, the Ellis Rowan Collection now appears an extraordinary bargain. Time has also allowed a calmer assessment of the significance of her work. Though art historians place her in the category of talented illustrator, and scientists quietly point out that her paintings lack the details of truly botanical art, her work captured the attitude of many Australians who were, from the 1880s onwards, coming to understand and appreciate Australian native plants and animals. In a speech at the opening of an exhibition of Ellis Rowan’s work in Sydney in 1920, the Governor Sir Walter Davidson had commended her work as:

a delight and instruction to future generations …before many of those beautiful birds become extinct … and the flowers disappear beneath the heels of civilization.

Leschenaultia biloba Lindl., blue leschenaultia, native of south-western Australia

Ellis Rowan (1848-1922)
Leschenaultia biloba Lindl., blue leschenaultia, native of south-western Australia [188-?]
1 watercolour; 54.5 x 38.2 cm
Pictorial Collection R2518

 

An anonymous supporter, commenting on a series of 125 flower paintings earlier purchased by the Queensland Government in 1912, had written that:

After seeing the wonderful collection painted by Mrs Rowan I love and admire them more than ever. Many of them are new to me and to many others in Southern Queensland. Ordinary people have even now little opportunity of seeing them in their native habitat.

The Australians who responded to her paintings, then as now, were reacting emotionally to her selection of strange and beautiful objects, and to her use of colour. Ellis Rowan helped many European Australians see their country’s flowers for the first time. She also confirmed the enthusiasms of those who were coming to feel a connection with the Australian landscape.

The Ellis Rowan Collection is also a testament to a most unusual person. Born into a comfortable family, the painter had married Captain Frederic Rowan in 1873. Though in some ways restricted by nineteenth-century expectations of the behaviour appropriate to a lady, she exploited the privileges of a lady to the full. Claiming that the winters at her home in Mount Macedon, Victoria, were too harsh for her health, she travelled widely in Australia and spent some years in the United States, painting wherever she went. Her social connections and her store of amusing anecdotes ensured she was always a welcome house-guest. There was no shortage of governors, governors’ wives and other people of consequence to open her exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, London, New York and elsewhere.

In her search for ever more colourful and unusual natural objects to paint, she met with many adventures. In her book A Flower Hunter in Queensland and New Zealand, she recalls an attempt, when once travelling alone, to cross the Bloomfield River, south of Cooktown. She became trapped on a log by a rapidly rising tide, and noticed a crocodile circling her. She was rescued by Aborigines. On her first visit to New Guinea in 1916, she contracted malaria — but returned there undaunted a year later. After some months painting from live specimens as many of the rare and endangered Birds of Paradise as possible, she succumbed to a second bout of malaria and was carried out of the jungle by New Guinea tribesmen. Many of the places she visited were remote, and she was often the only, or one of a very few, white women in the area.

Count Raggi's bird of paradise (Paradisaea raggiana)

Ellis Rowan (1848-1922)
[Count Raggi's bird of paradise (Paradisaea raggiana)] [1917]
1 watercolour; 76 x 56 cm
Pictorial Collection R1963

 

Although in appearance she was delicate, with a tiny waist, and a quiet voice, her interest in natural objects was stronger than the requirements of femininity. Searching for flowers on Murray Island, North Queensland, she scrambled up rocks by clinging to vines, and left most of her party behind. On one occasion, before painting a tarantula, she took it in her hand to examine it more closely. Her niece Maie Casey described her as one who lived solitary, dedicated, in a universe of heightened visual perception. Through her long experience of remote places and people, Ellis neither thought nor felt like anyone else.

Ellis Rowan’s paintings in the National Library’s Pictorial Collection are frequently lent to other institutions for exhibition, and are also regularly requested by visitors in the Pictorial Reading Room. She is probably best known, however, through reproductions of her works — in books such as Flower Paintings of Ellis Rowan published by the National Library in 1987. Ellis Rowan greeting cards continue to be one of the most popular items in the National Library’s Bookshop.

Over 400 of her paintings have been digitised, and can be viewed on the Library’s Pictures Catalogue (www.nla.gov.au/catalogue/pictures/) by entering the search term ‘Ellis Rowan’.

When not required for exhibition or examination in the Reading Room, Ellis Rowan’s watercolours live in Solander boxes in the Library’s Pictorial stacks, where constant temperature and humidity help ensure that her elegant and colourful records of the flowers, birds and insects of Australia and New Guinea will delight people for centuries to come.

— Linda Groom

The NLA has produced a major retrospective exhibition of Ellis Rowan's work with guest curator Patricia Fullerton. It features 90 paintings from the National Library's own collection and ceramics, a painted screen, medals, photographs and a chatelaine from institutional and private lenders. The exhibition can be seen at the National Library, Canberra until 27 January 2003, it will then tour to a number of venues.

Online Exhibition

Ellis Rowan catalogue
Ellis Rowan greeting cards - birds
Ellis Rowan greeting cards - flowers
Ellis Rowan check book
Ellis Rowan writing paper

References

Australian Parliament, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives; official Hansard, 24 August 1923 (pp 3664-69)

Hazzard, Margaret, Australia’s Brilliant Daughter Ellis Rowan: Artist, Naturalist, Explorer 1848 1922. (Richmond, Victoria: Greenhouse Publications, 1984)

McKay, Judith, Ellis Rowan: A Flower-Hunter in Queensland. (South Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1990)

National Library of Australia, Flower paintings of Ellis Rowan: from the collection of the National Library of Australia /with an introduction by Margaret Hazzard and notes on the flowers by Helen Hewson. (Canberra: NLA, 1987)

Rowan, Ellis, A Flower Hunter in Queensland and New Zealand. (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1898)

Rowan, Ellis, 1848-1922, Cutting book, 1895-1922, No 51, MS 2203, National Library of Australia

Orchid Flowers and fruit, Bloomfield, Queensland
Ellis Rowan (1848-1922)
[Orchid] 1880
1 watercolour; 54.8 x 37.8 cm
Pictorial Collection R2637

Ellis Rowan (1848-1922)
[Flowers and fruit, Bloomfield, Queensland]
1 watercolour; 54.7 x 38 cm
Pictorial Collection R2396

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