Design and Art Australia Online

watercolourist and diarist, was born near Bathurst, New South Wales, in September 1826, daughter of George Innes and Lorne, née Campbell. She lived with her parents at Glen Alice, Capertee. In 1837 she was taught by a Miss Smith, who, Annabella noted in her journal, was 'young and trained to be a governess, full of theories and her own importance’. Miss Smith despised the Innes’ guitar (encouraging piano lessons), 'as she also did our efforts at drawing from nature. She gave us stiff designs to copy, taught us to shade finely with pencil and to draw from copies, trees rare and wonderful, while our much-loved wild flowers were left unnoticed and our paint boxes set aside’. From 1841 until January 1843 Annabella also had drawing lessons in Parramatta (possibly from William Griffith ) but was obliged to abandon these through illness. Pencil sketches survive of her youthful efforts, including a copy after Le Brun of an expression of human passion labelled 'My first Attempt, Sept 25th [1837]’, a parrot (21 September), English thatched cottages of the picturesque drawing-book type, a crude copy of Chillon Castle (28 July 1837) and a sketch of a Parramatta house. All were intended for her Aunt Lorne (Miss Mackay) in Scotland.

Following her father’s death in 1839 Annabella and her mother moved in 1843 to live with her uncle, the prominent pastoralist Archibald Innes, at Port Macquarie. From 1845 to 1848 she kept a diary (first published in 1965) which vividly evokes her life at Lake Innes House, an extensive building of 22 rooms filled with books and paintings, including a reputed Veronese 'representing Achilles when in hiding at the Court of King Lycomedes, and dressed as a girl’. Annabella’s monochrome watercolour of the house dated 1842 is the earliest known view of this building, subsequently destroyed in bush-fires.

By the time Annabella was living at Lake Innes the previously lavish scale of the establishment had been 'very much reduced’ owing to the general economic depression. There was no longer a governess and, despite her aunt’s attempts to teach the girls, 'we were very much thrown on our own resources … We drew and practised [the piano] by fits and starts, albeit much at our own sweet will. I read greedily such books as we possessed, chiefly the [Waverley novels], which then and always interested me’. Spurred on by female cousinly rivalry, she also sketched.

In November 1843 she wrote: 'About this time some of my former love for drawing began to revive, and Dido [her cousin] and I resolved to paint at least one wild flower every week, beginning with the charming little blue commelina’. (An undated watercolour of one survives in her sketchbook.)

On 29 January 1844 she was painting the local white orchids; the undated painting in her sketchbook of a white dendrobium 'From the back of a tree near the 3rd fence Lake Innes’ is probably one of these. Surviving watercolours include snowdrops and a jonquil from Lake Innes (September 1843), many wildflower specimens and a painting of Sturt’s desert pea – 'a very poor specimen I am told’ – 'Drawn in Mr. Saunders’ Greenhouse in Maitland and finished from memory’ (November 1860?). Locations where the flowers were found, apart from Lake Innes and Port Macquarie, include Mount Rankin (September 1849), Saltram, Bathurst (October-November 1849), St Clair (March and August 1851) and Moreton Bay (undated). She also copied flower paintings and other sketches by the natural history artist Helena Scott .

On 17 June 1856 Annabella Innes married Patrick Charles Douglas-Boswell (b. 1816) at Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle. Her husband worked for the Bank of New South Wales until 1865, then the Boswells went to live in Scotland. No sketches are known after her marriage.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011