Eldest daughter of Emily and Donald Pritchard, a civil and mining engineer, Emmeline Pritchard was born in Hampshire, England, in 1849, and emigrated with her family to Australia in 1852. Pritchard showed artistic ability at an early age and first exhibited at the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition in 1869 when she was nineteen years old.
Pritchard subsequently enrolled at the National Gallery School, studying under celebrated painter Eugene von Guerard. Von Guerard was a neighbour and family friend of the Pritchards, with both households residing at Gipps Street in East Melbourne. Her work was included in both the Victorian Exhibition and London International in 1872, where she was represented by three copies, including two reproductions of works by Louis Buvelot, and one by Scottish painter Robert Herdman.
Later that year, Pritchard also travelled to and exhibited in the 1872 Metropolitan Intercolonial exhibition held in Sydney. She was the only National Gallery School student who exhibited an original composition, which was of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, and her work received favourable reviews from art critics of the period.
This same year, Pritchard witnessed a shocking and tragic accident – her father tripped and fell over a banister in their family home, landing on the flight of stairs below. Daniel Pritchard was not to regain proper consciousness and passed away shortly after from his injuries. Following the death of her father, the Pritchard family moved to ‘Park Hill Terrace’, a home on Hoddle Street, close to Wellington Parade.
Emmeline Pritchard’s Botanical Gardens, Melbourne, 1874, was completed when Pritchard was twenty-four years old and comes from the peak of her career, when she was exhibiting with the Victorian Academy of Arts and giving private tutoring. Annotated on the frame, the work was painted en plein air at the gardens on Monday 18 May 1874.
This work gives a glimpse into the history of Melbourne, from a time when the Yarra River ran through the Botanic Gardens. The Yarra was redirected at the turn of the century to remove a sharp bend, and the former part of the Yarra merged into what is now known as the Ornamental Lake.
In 1875, Pritchard married Joseph Brown, twenty-five years her senior, at Trinity Church in East Melbourne. The newlyweds moved to ‘Albert Terrace’ on Gipps Street, East Melbourne, the very street where she had lived as a young woman. Brown was to be appointed church warden and vestryman of Trinity Church in 1879. It appears that following their marriage, Pritchard’s painting career ended, and the couple were to have several children. Pritchard passed away on 4 December 1887 in Castlemaine and is buried alongside family members at Kew Cemetery.
Beckett Rozentals is NGV Curator, Australian Art.
Botanical Gardens, Melbourne is now the earliest oil painting by a female artist held in the NGV Australian Art Collection. It was generously gifted by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. NGV Magazine thanks Dr Alastair Robinson from the Royal Botanic Gardens for his insights on the location of Pritchard’s painting.
This article first appeared in the March–April 2024 edition of NGV Magazine.