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The Artistic Debate
Ellis Rowan was a woman working in a field dominated by men and reaping rewards that established Australian artists, such as Tom Roberts and Julian Ashton, felt they more justly deserved. Her subject matter, drawn from a meticulous observation of nature, isolated her from the landscapists and figure painters of the day.
Members of the Victorian Artists Society protested to the jurors, who stuck by their decision, but later, begrudgingly, conceded a silver medal to Louis Buvelot, the highly esteemed painter of the Australian landscape.
She was 40 years old when she again caused a major stir in Australias art world by scooping the awards at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibitionthe grandest show of its kind ever held at that time and including every country in the British Empire as well as Europe, America and Japan. Most Australian artists had an eye on the painting prize, including Frederick McCubbin, John Mather, Arthur Loureiro, Tom Roberts and George Ashton. The jury of 15 internationally respected connoisseurs singled out Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand as having the most interesting works: but if we except the flower paintings of Mrs Rowan, none of the works exhibited are of sufficient importance to call for special comment … Her masterly delineations of the Australian and New Zealand flowers … have secured for her the highest honour.
There was a storm of protest. Members of the Victorian Artists Society called a meeting to contest the judgement, as they had done eight years before. Their indignant letter concluded: … the one first-class award made to Australian art is a direct insult to the foreign artists who have done Australia the honour of competing in its International Exhibition.
Although this was a major triumph for Rowan, the bitterness of her male rivals was permanent and they continued to spurn and ridicule her work long after her death, contributing to the difficulty of later finding a lasting home for her paintings.
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