In 1856, Fanny Anne Charsley embarked on the Persia (described as ‘a noble ship fitted with a great deal of comforts and elegance’) and left London to undertake the three month journey to Australia. The Southern Cross newspaper described the passengers as of ‘superior character’ and noted that they were leaving England, not out of necessity, but ‘benefitting their own-interests’.
Fanny, born in 1828 in Buckinghamshire, was the fifth daughter of the eleven children of solicitor John Charsley and his wife Catherine. Coming from a pious and well-educated family, Fanny had been schooled in the arts of music, literature, sewing and dancing. However, her great love was botanical painting which she described as: “there is nothing like the study of Nature for amusing the mind, and leading us to think of the Great Creator of all things”.
Shortly after the death of her father, Fanny decided to join her older brother Edward and his family who had earlier emigrated to the Colony of Victoria. Single, but with her older sister Dorothy and Dorothy’s husband John Parton, the siblings were re-united in Melbourne where Edward had commenced a legal practice.
Her arrival in Melbourne was well-timed and coincided with the engagement of Baron Ferdinand von Mueller as Director of the young Botanic Gardens. It is possible that Edward introduced Fanny to Mueller as both were members of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. And it is probable that Fanny may have submitted her botanical illustrations to Mueller – a common practice for many amateur and professional botanists and illustrators.
Mueller was well-known for encouraging and supporting the botanical interests of the women in Melbourne and he identified the plants they painted and provided letters of introduction to publishers and scientists. He was particularly impressed with Fanny’s passion for finding and depicting the local flora and took her on as his pupil.
Mueller found Fanny to be an especially skilled artist and was impressed by the veracity and intricacy of her work. With meticulous precision Fanny painted the wildflowers of Victoria, which were so different from her native England. However, Fanny not only documented wildflowers but also described and depicted the edible and medicinal plants used by the Indigenous people in and around Melbourne. As a tribute to her abilities, Mueller named a flower, Asteraceoe Helipterum charsleyae, after her. The flower has since been reclassified as Rhodanthe charsleyae and is a species of paper daisy.
Goodenia geniculata, Leptospermum myrsinoides, Viola betonicifolia, Caesia corymbosa, Anguilaria dioica, Drosera auriculata, Bulbine bulbosa, Stylidium graminifolium, Viola hederacea (L) and Tetratheca ciliata, Hibbertia fasiculata, Grevillea latrobei, Hakea ulicina, Wahlenbergia gracilis (R), (1867) plates from The Wildflowers around Melbourne, Fanny Anne Charsley, Courtesy: Collection of the NGV, Melbourne
Fanny spent nine years in Victoria before her return to England in 1866. Within a year of her return to Buckinghamshire, she had chosen 13 delicate drawings and transferred the originals to lithographs which she then hand-painted. These were then published by Messrs Day and Son as The Wildflowers around Melbourne.
The book, tastefully bound in blue cloth, with a title page in gilt and gilt-edged pages, was the first book on Victorian flora aimed at the general public. However, at a cost of two guineas (a fortnight’s wages for the average worker in Melbourne) it was probably intended more as a memento than money-making exercise. (The National Library of Australia holds the original watercolours and their lithographs in an album bound in gold-tooled calfskin and covered front and back with leaved fretwork wooden panels).
Fanny was humble, almost apologetic, about her work and said of the book: “having leaped into the gulph (sic) of Art and Authorship … I can only beg of all my kind supporters to be merciful”. Nevertheless, a reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald described the work: “Regarding Miss Charley’s book as an elegant work for a drawing-room table, and as calculated to foster a taste for the pursuits of natural history, it is to be hoped that it may be widely circulated, and become a means of inducing other ladies to study the beauties of our Flora … and acknowledge the wisdom of the Creator”.
Fanny died in Sussex in 1915 aged 87 years. Her images continue to delight viewers and plates from her book have been digitised by the State Library Victoria. Thirteen lithographs are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, two of which are currently on display in the Colonial Galleries of the NGV, Federation Square, Melbourne.
I am indebted to Collecting Ladies – Ferdinand von Mueller and Woman Botanical Artists by Penny Olsen, National Library of Australia, 2013 for the information in this post.
Great to see the revival of beguidedbyart.co and to read these interesting art stories. Do enjoy reading of the artistic pursuits of women – particularly from the 19th Century, when publishing a book of your work would have been difficult. Credit to Von Mueller as well.