botanical artist, painted Australia’s earliest known art work by a resident woman in about 1804 – a watercolour of a pink hibiscus annotated: 'The Carrajan by Mrs Bellasis Sydney. The Shrub from the bark of which the Natives make their fishing lines’. It is included in a (partly dispersed) album of European prints and early watercolours of natural history subjects (ML), mainly by J.F. Lewin and G.P. Harris .
Mrs Bellasis must have been the wife of Lieutenant George Bridges Bellasis (d.1825) of the East India Company’s military establishment. Convicted of murder after a duel, he was transported to New South Wales from Mumbai (then Bombay) in the Fly in 1802; Mrs Bellasis accompanied him. On arrival in Sydney, George was immediately given a conditional pardon by Governor King and on 24 June 1803 received a royal pardon as an 'act of commiseration towards a gallant but unfortunate officer and an afflicted dying wife’. Lord Wellesley wrote to the governor on 2 March 1804 recommending that Bellasis be put in charge of the battery and artillery, but he did not remain in NSW, returning to India 'on the China fleet’ in October. The afflicted Mrs Bellasis survived to accompany him.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
