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Details
- Date
- (1882)
- Media category
- Watercolour
- Materials used
- watercolour, opaque white highlights
- Dimensions
- 65.7 x 39.2 cm
- Credit
- Gift of Mr F. Storch 1992
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 76.1992
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Ellis Rowan
Works in the collection
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About
In her lifetime, Ellis Rowan was one of Australia’s most prolific and best-known professional artists. A self-styled ‘flower hunter’, Rowan travelled through Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and further afield in search of native flowers, which she documented in thousands of natural history paintings.
'Waratahs, New South Wales' captures a development in Rowan’s practice in which flowers are depicted in their natural environment, rather than as specimens. By painting waratahs in the wild, Rowan emphasises the flowers’ remote location and her intrepid journey to reach them.
Waratahs are native to New South Wales and were a popular motif in Australian decorative arts. Rowan’s paintings of waratahs and other Australian flora on china homewares were sent to England for copying by the Royal Worcester Porcelain Company.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 1 exhibition
State of the Waratah, S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Rocks, 01 Sep 2000–08 Oct 2000
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Margaret Betteridge, State of the waratah: the floral emblem of New South Wales in legend, art and industry, 'A mere flower painter', pg. 16-17, Sydney, 2000, 16, 17 (colour illus.).
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Anna Elias, Art and Australia (vol. 32, no. 1), 'Useless Beauty', pg. 66-72, Sydney, Spring 1994, 71 (colour illus.).
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