sketcher and poet, was the third daughter and sixth child of Rev. Samuel Marsden and Elizabeth, née Fristan, of Parramatta, New South Wales. She accompanied her father to New Zealand in 1830. Later that year she married John Betts in Sydney. An unsigned and undated portrait (Mitchell Library), presumed to have been painted about this time and attributed to Richard Read junior , shows Mary in the act of painting a flower in her sketchbook. The specimen she is copying stands in a vase on the table in front of her and her box of watercolours is at her side, but none of the flower paintings she presumably produced have been identified. There are, however, surviving sketches attributed to the Marsden daughters with family papers in England. As Mary Betts, she published a tribute to her father, Lines Written on the 100th Anniversary of the Birthday of the Rev. Samuel Marsden (Sydney 1871).
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
