Design and Art Australia Online

painter, designer and decorator, was born in Sydney on 5 March 1843, only child of William Buchanan, a civil engineer and surveyor, and Elizabeth, née Lucas. Bessie’s childhood was spent mainly at Mersheen, her father’s grant on the Hunter River (NSW), and from about 1851 on the family property, Tara, near Walcha. The latter was sold in 1865 and the Buchanans retired to Tara in St Leonards, Sydney. In 1874 they moved from St John’s Terrace to a house in Darlinghurst named Lara.

A family trip to Britain in 1867-69 was crucial to Bessie’s development. Her diaries refer to regular drawing lessons in Dublin, and an album and scrapbook survive. A watercolour of a vase with honeysuckle, removed from the album, always hung in the drawing-room of her married home, Rouse Hill. Copies were made from the large collection of prints she acquired, e.g. one of a series of T. Nelson & Sons’ books of scenic chromolithographs, Loch Lomond and Its Scenery and Scenery of Perthshire Dunkeld to Glen Tilt, was the source of her watercolours of the Trossachs and a view of a bridge and waterfall. Although conventional picturesque compositions of sublime dramatic scenery, these would have embodied familiar associations with 'the ancient Buchanan lands near Loch Lomond’ – associations made fashionable by the Romantic movement and Queen Victoria’s enthusiasm for Scottish Highland scenery.

In March 1874 Bessie married Edwin Stephen Rouse (1849-1931) and spent fifty years with him at Rouse Hill until her death. The couple had two daughters: Nina (later Mrs Terry 1875-1968) and Kathleen (1878-1932). Australian copies as well as original sketches were probably begun soon after her marriage. One source, identified by Patricia R. McDonald, was H.J. Johnstone’s Billabong on the Goulburn, Victoria, acquired by the NSW Art Gallery in 1884. A Blue Mountains scene in oils (c.1890-1910) was apparently based on a Government Railways’ photograph. Originals in a sketchbook include a pencil sketch of the front hall at Rouse Hill, various unidentified interiors and a scene of a gate – the basis of an oil painting in the main bedroom which looks like an early work in her oil painting phase (c.1885-1920). Bessie worked in a broad range of mediums: pencil, watercolour, oil, découpage, decalcomania and needlework.

While personal associations were central to her choice of subject, they are also significant in the social context of her work. Rouse Hill contains a significant body of work by relatives and friends, including oil paintings by her cousin, Rev. Robert Fraser of Bridge of Allan, Scotland (the easel painting in the 1894 view of her studio is one of these) and pencil portraits by Fred Nixon. Antoinette Hayden, wife of the rector of St John’s, Darlinghurst (the church where Bessie and Edwin Stephen were married), produced a fine 1872 portrait of Bessie. Louise Gunther, presumably a daughter of the Rouses’ pastor at Gulgong, contributed a pair of painted plaques, while two fancy-dress costumes – Little Bo-Peep and Boy Blue – are attributed to her governess-nanny, Sarah Frances Cockram (c.1850-1913). Long after their departure the sketchbooks of Elizabeth Campbell (née Rouse 1845-1930) and Mary Phoebe Dangar (née Rouse 1847-1931) remained in the schoolroom.

Bessie’s work of adorning her home belongs firmly within the mid-nineteenth century context of a gentlewoman’s 'accomplishments’. Others were playing the piano, dancing (at least in early life) and riding. She was also a noted Sydney beauty.

Writers:

Carlin, Scott

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011