Painter, decorative artist and amateur architect in Duntroon, Canberra. Painted meticulously executed botanical paintings and was known for her medical dispensary.
painter, decorative artist and amateur architect, was born at Morpeth in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, on 30 June 1827, only surviving daughter of Edward Charles Close and Sarah Susannah, nee Palmer. She began painting at least from 1842, when competent watercolour flowers in the meticulous style of Regency book illustrations are known. Her 1843 set of four large watercolours, The Flowers of the [English] Seasons (p.c.), is of an extremely professional standard for a sixteen-year-old colonial girl. This enthusiasm for English flora appears to have been due to a consciousness of her botanical heritage; her paternal grandmother was a grand-daughter of Peter Collinson (1694-1768), the eminent English collector and populariser of new flower species from North America and elsewhere. The influence of painting lessons from Conrad Martens during the 1840s is evident in her early landscape drawings and watercolours. Marrianne Close was a grand-niece of Sophia Campbell whose fourth son, George Palmer Campbell (1818-81), she married in the family church, St James’s Church of England, Morpeth, on 24 August 1854. About fifty silhouette portraits by Marrianne (1847, p.c.) include all the Australian Palmer and Campbell clans, as well as her own family; she must have known George most of her life. After the marriage the Campbells lived mainly at Duntroon, a property on the Limestone Plains (now Canberra, ACT) George inherited from his father. Marrianne designed numerous additions to Duntroon in the early 1860s, including cottages for the workers, the gardener and the manager of the estate, stables, ...
Flourished
Flourished
Flourished
Flourished
Flourished
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