National Library of Australia
The Flower Hunter | Ellis Rowan

The Artistic Debate

Medal from the Melbourne International Exhibition  1880 Few painters in the history of Australian art have been so widely honoured as Ellis Rowan. Yet it is hard to think of any who have also been the subject of an ongoing debate on the merit of their work, stretching from art circles into the Australian Parliament, and continuing after death.

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.

Painted screen c.1890It was in October 1880, at the Melbourne Exhibition Building, that Rowan first incurred the wrath of her fellow male painters by winning a gold medal for a four-leaved screen on satin, and special merit for ten framed groups of New Zealand wildflowers on satin. Rowan and another flower painter, Catherine Purves, were the only artists awarded gold medals in the art section.

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.

Lamiodendron magnificum  c.1916–1917 The dilemma in appreciating Ellis Rowan’s work has always been that it falls between two camps; she combined botanical accuracy (thought to be the preserve of male scientific painters) with an individual style that bordered on the romantic and, later, became boldly dramatic in colour and presentation.

She was 40 years old when she again caused a major stir in Australia’s art world by scooping the awards at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition—the 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.’

Crysanthemums 1888Later, eight years after her success at the Exhibition, she won the two top awards—a gold medal for her picture Chrysanthemums, a collection of 17 flower pieces in the Victorian court, an unspecified number in the Queensland court, and 24 pictures in the New Zealand court, and second prize for her picture Marguerites. Tom Roberts also won a second prize for three oil paintings— Reconciliation, Blue Eyes and Brown, and C.S. Patterson—and Frederick McCubbin and John Mather each won a third prize.

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’.

Eugenia cormiflora  c.1911 The jury confirmed their original decision however, ridiculing the insolence of the society and the signatories, John Mather and George Ashton, and questioning which was more offensive: ‘The ludicrous attempt to protect and patronise the foreign artists, or the cruel and unmanly effort to injure the artistic reputation of the lady overtly referred to in the resolution.’ (Argus, Melbourne, 25 January 1889).

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.