watercolourist, lithographer and art teacher, arrived at Van Diemen’s Land from London in 1853 with her parents, Francis Burgess, chief police magistrate of Hobart Town from 1846, and his wife Amelia. Her mother’s embroidery of native flowers, done at the age of eighty-four, was shown at both the 1879 Sydney International and the 1880 Melbourne International exhibitions. Ellen’s aunt, Miss Burgess, was a competent sketcher; her drawings were shown posthumously in the 1845 Hobart Town exhibition by Francis Burgess.
Ellen took drawing lessons from John Skinner Prout while he was at Hobart Town in 1843 48, although, according to Moore, 'the lessons mainly consisted of watching him paint a landscape in watercolour, the fee for each lesson being one guinea’. Nevertheless, Burgess achieved some local reputation as a watercolour painter in Proutian style. Her watercolour Scene on the Ouse, near Hamilton, VDL, from a Sketch by J.S. Prout was shown at the 1845 Hobart Town exhibition, while included among Prout’s works at the same exhibition was the watercolour On Maria Island, VDL, from a Sketch by Miss Burgess . At the 1846 exhibition Francis Burgess lent a painting of Cape Town done by his daughter (presumably on the voyage out).
When Francis Burgess visited Norfolk Island for a few months in 1846 as judge of the Criminal Court, Ellen accompanied him. Two of her watercolour paintings, Waterfall in Fern Tree Valley and View of Norfolk Island , were lent by her father to the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition. She was named as exhibitor and artist of Rocks at Brown’s River , Fern Tree Valley, Norfolk Island and other watercolours shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Moore records that 'the scenery of the eastern coast [of Tasmania] provided her with her best subjects’.
Most of Burgess’s paintings are still in family possession but there are some Norfolk Island watercolours in the Anglican Diocesan Archives, Hobart. A lithograph made after her painting The Settlement, Norfolk Island , Clifford Craig suggests, was drawn on stone by Miss Burgess herself possibly under Prout’s supervision, after her return from Norfolk in 1846. The 'ss’ of the 'E. Burgess’ inscribed on the stone has been reversed, a characteristic sign of an inexperienced lithographer.
Burgess’s subjects as well as style were standard Proutian Picturesque, such as Battery Point, with the Windmill and Tower of St George’s (formerly Clifford Craig Collection) or her views of Kingston, Norfolk Island. The latter include the main settlement buildings but never its convict inhabitants. A few, such as one of the guard and sentry-box outside Government House, Kingston, depict rarely recorded details of this penal settlement. For a time Miss Burgess taught art at Horton College, Ross. She died at Hobart on 30 July 1908.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
