botanical painter and collector, eldest daughter of Stephen and Martha King, came to South Australia with her parents as an infant, arriving in the Oleana on 15 January 1839. She lived with her family at Kingsford, near Gawler, until May 1860 when she married Charles Algernon (Ally) Wilson in St George’s Church of England, Gawler. They had three sons and two daughters. She died at their home Cwm Hir Lodge, Bridge Street, Kensington (SA), in 1909. A daguerreotype portrait of her, taken in South Australia before her marriage, is held in private collection.
Mrs Wilson was described in her obituary as 'one of the first ladies to paint South Australian native flowers’. Her formal, Regency-style watercolour, Australian Native Flowers (1858), shown in the Centennial Exhibition of Historical Records at Adelaide in 1936 is held in private collection. She was a member of the committee established to choose statuary for the Adelaide Botanic Gardens (purchased about 1867) and under Director Dr Richard Schomburgk compiled and catalogued 600 specimens of dried and pressed South Australian wildflowers and ferns (Adelaide Botanic Gardens Library). They were bound in book form by the South Australian government and sent to the 1881 Paris Universal Exhibition. Her second daughter, Emily Annie Layard Wilson (1865-1953), was also an accomplished watercolour painter of Australian wildflowers.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
