ROWAN, MARIAN ELLIS (1848-1922), artist, naturalist and explorer, was born on 30 July 1848 in Melbourne, first child of Charles Ryan of Kilfera station, Port Phillip District, and his wife Marian, née Cotton. Her grandfather John Cotton had written and illustrated two books on English birds. (Sir) Charles Snodgrass and Cecil Godfrey Ryan were brothers. Ellis attended a girls' school at Brighton, Victoria, but had no formal training in art. In 1869, however, she visited English relatives who advised her to continue painting wildflowers in her own style. It was this which brought her lasting fame.
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Ellis Rowan was a botanical artist who had no formal art training. She received encouragement from her family and husband, Frederick Charles Rowan, whom she married in 1873, to develop her own style in painting wildflowers. Her work was exhibited in both Australia and overseas for which she won a variety of art prizes.
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A Melbourne born, prolific natural history painter with an international reputation. Her work was classified within the despised female 'hobby' of flower painting.
Natural history painter, was born in Melbourne on 30 July 1848, eldest of the seven children of Charles Ryan and Marian, née Cotton. Ellis (as she was always called) had an upper middle-class girl's education, including some tuition in watercolour painting, apparently from John Mather in Melbourne, and possibly private art classes in England (which she first visited in 1869), although she later claimed, with characteristic exaggeration, to have been entirely self-taught. Rowan ...
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