Ellis Rowan (1848-1922) was an Australian painter, specializing in wildflowers in all parts of that country at a time when the native flora was not well-known by European settlers. She was not trained as a botanist, which made her work of limited use in that field. However, the exuberance and abundance (at least 3,000 survive) of her paintings made her very popular. She typically combined flowers with leaves and stems into bouquets, and worked quickly, being able to paint in watercolors and gouache without initial pencil underlay.
In “Flower Paintings of Ellis Rowan,” Helen Hewson wrote that her images “evoke the particular quality of the beauty of the Australian bush, a beauty which is vivid, yet also elusive and vulnerable.” Hewson notes the limitations of Rowan’s work for botanists, but recognizes that “her work is so accurate that the specialist can identify a large proportion of the subjects with considerable reliability.”
Excerpted from the Winter 2019 Arboretum Bulletin