painter, was raised on Guernsey, a daughter of James Henderson and Catherine, née Black, and a sister of John Black Henderson . She came to Victoria in 1838 with her sister, Georgiana, and Georgiana’s husband, John David McHaffie. In 1842 the trio settled on Phillip Island, a bird and animal sanctuary run by the Victorian Acclimatization Society under McHaffie’s management. Henderson worked intermittently as a governess, and collected seaweed and painted botanical watercolours as hobbies. Early in 1862, while painting flowers in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, she met Ferdinand von Mueller , the director. The following year they were engaged but von Mueller soon broke it off on the dubious grounds of his ill-health. When John McHaffie was dispossessed of the Phillip Island lease by the Victorian government in the 1860s Henderson and the McHaffies moved to Yanakie, South Gippsland. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition Euphemia’s oil painting, The Pinnacle Rock, Western Port , was exhibited by her brother. She died, unmarried, at Kew, Victoria, in 1907.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
