PARSONS, ELIZABETH (1831-1897)

"Bay Of Islands, NZ" (1880)
watercolour
10 x 40cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Brisbane
 
Parsons is a forgotten, pioneering English-born Australian Colonial Artist. She studied watercolour in London under revered British Watercolourists, Thomas Miles Richardson & James Duffield Harding. During her early life she visited a number of locations to sketch and paint the scenery, including areas of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Wales, Devon and Cornwall as well as at Strathclyde in Scotland. In 1864 she journeyed to Fontainebleau in France..When Parsons arrived in Australia in 1870, she soon began to exhibit her works. Her earliest show was on 1 December 1870, in an exhibition of "Works by Victorian Artists" at the Melbourne Public Library. A review in the Argus reported that "In the watercolour department there are no better landscapes than those painted by Mrs Parsons.".On 3 December 1874 Parsons was elected to the Council of the Victorian Academy of Art, becoming its first female council member, despite opposition from other members. She was an active member of Melbourne's notoriously bohemian Buonarotti Club founded in 1883, & after its demise in 1887 founded a similar club in 1889, known as Stray Leaves, comprising several other ex-Buonarotti members..Along with Tom Roberts , Arthur Streeton et al. she was a founding member of the highly professional Australian Artists’ Association in Melbourne, where she had solo shows in 1885 & 1896. Three Australian views 'treated in the lady’s usual free and easy style’ were included in the 1873 London International Exhibition and there is some speculation that she was also included in the 1875 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition..Despite this impressive career and oeuvre, Parsons remains little known. Public collections hold only a few of her finished paintings, but have numerous sketches (La Trobe University), single pieces in Castlemaine Museum & the State Library Of Victoria, and a drawing book of St Kilda views (NGA). This wonderful, serene watercolour was completed on a short sojourn to NZ in 1880.