Ellis Rowan
Adventures of
a flower hunter
“My love for the
flora of Australia, at
once so unique and so
fascinating, together
with my desire to
complete my
collection of floral
paintings, has
carried me into other
colonies, Queensland
and some of the
remotest parts of the
great Continent of
Australia. The
excitement of seeking
and the delight of
finding rare or even
unknown specimens
abundantly
compensated me for
all difficulties,
fatigue and
hardships.”
BY ROSEMARY JOHNSON
There can be few lives more completely filled or more driven by passion than that of Australian artist, Ellis
Rowan. An intriguing character – talented, adventurous, self-obsessed and full of contradictions – Ellis turned
her love for painting flowers into a career that took her all over the world and won her the highest acclaim.
E
LLIS ROWAN (nee Marian
Ellis Ryan) was born in
Melbourne in July 1848, the
eldest of seven children of
60 Australian Heritage
Charles and Marian Ryan, pastoralists
of central Victoria. Never ordinary,
even her name set Ellis apart – it was
taken from her paternal grandmother,
ABOVE: Coral tree (Erythrina insularis) and
butterflies, Papua New Guinea, watercolour
by Ellis Rowan. National Library of Australia,
nla.pic-an6647235.
ABOVE: Ellis Rowan sketching Mary Moule sitting on the ground, 1887. National Library of Victoria, nla.pic-an21411729. The child on a pony is probably Puck,
aged 12. BELOW: Portrait of Captain Frederick Charles Rowan (in New Zealand Armed Constabulary uniform?), husband of Ellis Rowan, c 1870.
Sepia photograph. National Library of Australia nla.pic-an24341828.
Ellis Agar Hartley, the illegitimate daughter of King
George IV and the Countess of Brandon.
When she was five, the family moved to the
Melbourne suburb of Brighton, and Ellis attended an
exclusive school for young ladies where, among other
accomplishments, she learnt painting in watercolour.
At the age of 21, after she had finished her education,
Ellis visited relatives in England and may have received
art lessons there, although she later claimed to have
been entirely self-taught. In any event, on her return,
her paintings of Australian wildflowers on a four-panel
satin screen won a bronze medal at Melbourne’s 1872
Intercolonial Exhibition.
Four years later, Ellis married a British army officer,
Captain Frederic Charles Rowan. Frederic had suffered
severe injuries in the New Zealand Maori Wars and was
returning to New Zealand after years of treatment to
reconstruct his face. Although she was, perhaps, little
suited to life as a military man’s wife, Ellis settled into
her new life in New Zealand and, encouraged by her
husband who shared her love of nature, refined her
skills by painting the local wildflowers.
Meanwhile, her father had bought a property,
Derriweit Heights, on Mount Macedon and there he built
a large mansion. Ellis returned briefly in 1875 to stay at
Derriweit Heights during her confinement for their only
child, Frederic Charles Eric Elliott Rowan, nicknamed
Puck. It was here that she met the botanist, Ferdinand
von Mueller, who had been engaged by her father to
advise on the selection of plants for the garden, and so
began a long association which lasted until his death in
Australian Heritage 61
technique was developing under various influences and she
began using oils and setting her subjects in their natural
environment. She continued her association with von
Mueller, sending him her paintings for identification.
In 1883, her sister Ada married Lord Charles Montagu
Douglas Scott, fourth son of the Duke of Buccleugh, in a
ceremony at the Church of England in Sunbury. The
reception was held at Rupertswood, the home of their
cousin, Janet Snodgrass, who had married Sir William
Clarke just months earlier. Ellis and another sister,
Blanche, then travelled to Europe via India. Ellis
exhibited at the International Exhibition in Calcutta and
travelled about the subcontinent painting before she
continued on to Europe to participate successfully in
numerous exhibitions, including the Amsterdam
Exhibition and the Russian exhibition at St Petersburg.
During her long absence, her husband continued his
business pursuits, and Puck was left with his grandparents
and aunts at Derriweit and later attended Melbourne
Grammar as a boarder.
After she returned to Melbourne, it was not long before
Ellis’ restless spirit got the better of her once more and, in
1887, she made her ‘delicate health’ and the rigours of
Melbourne’s winters a convenient excuse to set out on the
first of several flower hunting expeditions to Queensland.
During this trip, Ellis planned to paint illustrations for the
Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, and she took Puck, then 12
Portrait of Ellis Rowan and her son Eric (Puck), c 1886. Sepia
photograph. National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an24341807.
1896 and was to have a profound influence on Ellis’s
career.
The Rowan family spent three years in New Zealand
before Frederick quit the army to move back to Melbourne
for the sake of Puck’s education. With a natural lust for
travel and adventure, Ellis enthusiastically accompanied
her husband on his business trips around the country,
taking every opportunity to paint the wildflowers she
found. It was while on a trip to Western Australia in 1880
that she met the English artist Marianne North, and the
two women spent weeks together painting wildflowers.
North described Ellis as a charming spoiled child, “a
very pretty fairy-like little woman, always over-dressed and
afraid to go out of the house because people stared at her,”
while, for her part, Ellis found in Marianne something of a
role model.
I became her devoted admirer and she became the pioneer of
my ambition. A world-wide traveler in search of specimens,
her description of her adventures was so vivid, so graphic, so
thrilling in it’s prospects of wider fields that I became
infected, stimulated by an example and a result beyond
dreams successful. Retiring to my room that night, after my
conversation with her, I resolved to do as she had done. I
would travel the world in search of flowers rare and
wonderful, travel countries inaccessible, as well as those
which offered difficulties only imaginary.
Ellis Rowan had arrived at her formula for life, one that
she would pursue relentlessly – even ruthlessly – for the
next 40 years. That year, her reputation as an artist began
its ascent when she won a gold medal at the 1880
Melbourne International Exhibition. Her painting
62 Australian Heritage
Anigozanthos manglesii [picture] by Ellis Rowan, (188-?), watercolour;
54.4 x 37 cm. Part of Ellis Rowan, 1848–1922, Flower and bird
paintings [picture]. National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an6801626.
Grevillea, Cooktown, Qld, watercolour by Ellis Rowan, 1891?.
National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an6649823.
Australian Heritage 63
eating pigeons in all the colours of
the rainbows … North Australia in
flower time is a blaze of colour.
Amorphophallus flower and fruit, New Guinea, watercolour by Ellis Rowan, 1916?. National Library
of Australia, nla.pic-an6647795. “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.
years old, with her for the first few
weeks. Once there, she appeared to
make a remarkable recovery and
displayed strength and stamina that
would have been the envy of many a
hardened bushman.
Ellis was never shy of using her
connections to achieve her purpose,
and she arrived in Queensland with
letters of introduction to influential
people who offered her their
hospitality and support. Her niece,
Lady Maie Casey, wrote: “Either they
were mad about her and forever her
64 Australian Heritage
blinded slaves, men and women alike,
or they found her altogether too odd
and were frightened of her.”
Nevertheless, she made the best of
every opportunity, revelling in
Queensland’s brilliant colours and
diversity of plants and animals.
Queensland has the attraction for the
artist that if one misses the wild
flowers there are the wild fruits to
follow, vividly coloured, as is
everything else in that land of
sunshine. And through the scrub,
where the wild fruits are thickest,
hordes of flying foxes sweep, and fruit-
By 1888, Ellis Rowan was wellknown throughout Australia, and her
public profile was further boosted
when she won the major gold medal
at the Melbourne Centennial
International Exhibition in 1888. The
Victorian Artists Society – whose
membership included celebrated
artists such as Tom Roberts, Frederic
McCubbin and Arthur Streeton – was
outraged that the work of an amateur
flower painter should have been rated
above their more worthy figure studies
and landscapes and they considered
her gold medal a “direct insult” to the
foreign artists who had competed.
In 1891, Ellis made a second trip to
Queensland, travelling by sea from
Brisbane to Rockhampton, Mackay
and Townsville where she took first a
train trip to Charters Towers and
Hughendon, and then a steamer trip
up the Herbert River. Here she stayed
on a sugar plantation for six weeks,
making adventurous painting and
collecting excursions. She travelled
further north to a plantation on the
Johnstone River, inland from Innisfail,
before returning to Townsville to
catch a steamer to Cairns. After a few
days at another plantation, she took
the train up the newly opened
Kuranda Range railway. In letters to
her husband she described her
adventures, taking a trip with the
engineer and his men on a trolly down
to the Barron Falls where she
clambered out on to a precarious ledge
to sketch and collect orchids and
sundew. Determined to visit the
famous caves at Chillagoe, she took
the long coach trip from Myola via
Herberton to Montalbion along the
roughest tracks that Australia had to
offer. From Montalbion, the rest of
the trip was in an open buggy and a
one-horse trap through the sweltering
heat. Ellis was rewarded by the aweinspiring caves, and spent several days
scrambling around them, inside and
out. She wrote:
Taking them individually, they struck
me as larger, grander and more
imposing than any of the Jenolan
caves in New South Wales.
Not yet content with her outback
adventures, Ellis decided to take a trap
from Herberton to Georgetown – a
distance of 260 km, with a driver, an
Aboriginal boy and a local woman as
companion. Adventures they had
aplenty on the way, facing bushfires,
storms, and flooding rivers. Returning
to Cairns, Ellis caught a steamer to
Cooktown, where she spent a
fortnight painting and taking evening
walks in the bush before catching a
steamer for the Bloomfield River on
her quest for flowers. Here she had a
close call attempting to negotiate a
fallen tree across a crocodile-infested
river (described in nail-biting detail
in a letter to her husband), and spent
two weeks making excursions into the
bush to collect rare orchids and other
wildflowers to paint.
Returning to Cooktown, Ellis
completed her voyage to the northern
tip of Australia by steamer to
Thursday Island and beyond to Jervis
Island, the most northerly of the
Torres Strait group, just 50 km from
New Guinea. It was a foretaste of the
adventurous life ahead of her.
Ellis returned to her husband in
Melbourne in 1892 but, soon after he
died of pneumonia, and she went with
her son, now 17, to live at Mount
Macedon. The following year, she set
out again, this time to New Zealand
to explore and paint in many parts
that she had not previously visited.
Her next voyage was to London in
1895, partly to visit her sister Ada,
and also to present a show of her
paintings in Bond Street. The British
press was enchanted, describing Ellis
as an “intrepid explorer” who had
“penetrated to parts never before
trodden by a woman.”
A review in The Sketcher wondered
at her artistry and knowledge:
had accepted three of them and would
have them made into a screen for her
private quarters. Another London
exhibition in 1896 attracted further
acclaim, as well as sales and
commissions. At the request of von
Mueller, she then took her collection
to Germany where, she later claimed,
she turned down an offer from the
former Prime Minister, Otto von
Bismarck, of £15,000 for the lot.
With her star still rising, Ellis then
travelled to the United States, where,
allegedly, she was entertained by
President McKinley, had a facelift (an
operation which left her with a
strangely frozen expression) and met
Alice Lounsberry, a young botanist
and author with whom she had an
instant rapport and would collaborate
closely over the next nine years,
travelling the length and breadth of
America to hunt for and paint
wildflowers. During her time in
America, she published three books
with Lounsberry and also staged a
major exhibition in New York of her
watercolour paintings of the flora of
Australasia, New Zealand, the West
Indies and the United States.
It was during this period, in
December 1897, that she received
news that both her father and her
son, Puck, were dead. The public
explanation for Puck’s death was that
he had been “killed in a skirmish” in
Majubadaland, but an official letter
from the Rhodesian Archives stated
that “f.c.E.E. Rowan died in Umtali
Gaol on 5 December, 1897, from
Chronic Bright’s Disease. He had
been committed for trial on 3rd
December 1897 on a charge of
Forgery and Uttering.”
Nearly all her drawings are graceful in
composition, line falling into line,
leaf springing from stalk, blossom and
bud all lying in admired and well
ordered confusion – which, after all,
is the ideal method of flower
painting. The only objection is to the
names of these wild flowers: it is to us
little short of extraordinary that Mrs
Rowan can be on terms of Familiarity
with Limnanthemum exaltum
utricularia.
That particular accomplishment
was, of course, due to her friendship
with Baron von Mueller.
Invited to Windsor Castle, Ellis
presented a selection of paintings to
the reclusive Queen Victoria and her
daughters, Princess Louise and
Princess Beatrice. A few days later,
she received notification from the
Queen’s equerry that the monarch
Red Bird-of-Paradise (Paradisaea raggiana), Papua New Guinea, watercolour by Ellis Rowan,
1917. National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an6633332-v.
Australian Heritage 65
Ellis finally returned to Melbourne
in 1905, staying at Cliveden, the
home of her cousin, Janet Clarke, and
with her mother, now a widow, and
her sisters at Mount Macedon. But
her restless spirit was by no means
assuaged, and in 1906 she took a trip
to Western Australia, visiting the
harsh country of the goldfields of
Kalgoorlie. Here, a local miner gave
her a baby bilby which she named
Bill Baillie and which was to become
a much-loved pet and inspiration for
her children’s book, Bill Baillie,
published in 1908 with illustrations
by Jack Sommers and her own scenes
of Western Australia.
During her return east, Ellis
mounted an exhibition in Adelaide,
and sold 100 paintings to the South
Australian government for £1000.
For the next few years, she based
herself at The Cottage at Macedon,
built after her father’s death and the
sale of Derriweit. With the onset of
the Great War, she devoted herself to
raising funds for the Red Cross
through sale of her art, but in 1916,
when Australia occupied German
New Guinea, she seized the
opportunity for another adventure.
At the age of 68, she was
commissioned by the Royal Worcester
Porcelain Company to paint New
Guinea’s flowers and birds. She set
sail by steamer, reaching Port
Moresby, Madang, and finally, after a
difficult overland trek, a remote
German mission in the mountains,
painting flora and butterflies as she
went. Here, at a place called
Nobonob, she set herself the task of
painting all of the birds of paradise,
paying the local people to capture
them for her, preferably alive. Over a
period of nearly two years, she visited
the New Guinea highlands,
withstanding the discomfort of the
tropical climate and bouts of malaria
while she captured on paper 45 of the
52 known birds of paradise.
The last journey to New Guinea
was nearly the death of her – so ill
was she, she had to be carried down
from the mountains on a stretcher –
and it was to be the end of her
painting expeditions. However, she
remained relentlessly energetic when
she returned to Mount Macedon,
staging Australia’s largest art
66 Australian Heritage
Dendrobium atroviolaceum, Papua New Guinea, watercolour by Ellis Rowan, 1916. National Library
of Australia, nla.pic-an23620871.
exhibition with 1000 works at
Anthony Horden’s Gallery in Sydney
in 1920. Driven by the desire to have
her collection preserved as a record of
Australia’s flora, she had years earlier
persuaded the Queensland
government to purchase many of her
Queensland paintings and, in 1921,
the Federal government agreed to
purchase a large collection of her
works, including her birds of paradise.
These collections are now held by the
Queensland Museum and the
National Library of Australia. In
October 1922, her health damaged by
malaria and fatigue, Ellis Rowan died
at the age of 74.
The Author
Rosemary Johnson is a freelance
writer based in Melbourne.
Further Reading
The Flower Hunter, by Ellis Rowan, Angus
& Robertson, first published in 1898 as
A Flower Hunter in Queensland and
New Zealand
Wild Flower Hunter, The Story of Ellis
Rowan, by H J Samuel, Constable and
Co Ltd, London, 1961
An Australian Story, 1837–1907, by Maie
Casey, published by Michael Joseph
Ltd, London, 1962 ◆