Azaleas from Flowers and Gardens of Japan by Ella and Florence du Cane, 1908

My title is a bit unfair. The Essex Girls I’m going to talk about are not those caricatured on TOWI or in popular comedy but two aristocratic young ladies from the county who not only created gardens there but also travelled the world and wrote and illustrated a series of travel books. These were mainly about gardens and introduced a touch of the exotic and colour, to their British readers.

Aristocratic women in the 19thc were conventionally taught to paint and draw but few made a living out of it. That would have been thought shocking. But one woman who did was Ella Du Cane. The daughter of a Tory MP and colonial governor, after the death of her father, she set off with her elder sister Florence to travel the world.

Braxted Park

Ella and Florence were two of the children of Sir Charles Du Cane and his wife Georgiana, the granddaughter of the Anglo-American painter John Singleton Copley.  The Du Canes were descended from Huguenot merchants who had done well in Britain, and had moved into the landed elite, buying and then enlarging Braxted Park  near Maldon in Essex in the mid-18thc.  Sir Charles became  a Tory MP in 1852 but in 1868 was appointed Governor of Tasmania, and in fact both girls were born in Hobart, Florence in 1869 and Ella in 1874.

Mountains, from the Valley Garden.         Country Life, 14th May 1925

Both their parents were interested in gardening and there is a letter at Kew asking for plant idents of some Australian pressed flowers. Sir Charles and his family returned to Braxted at the end of his 5 year term in office and he eventually died there in 1889 when Ella was just 14 and Florence 19. Braxted was  inherited by their brother  while  the rest of the family moved to Mountains  a former farm house nearby, which “commands extensive views of the surrounding country, and the creeks and bays of the ocean” [White’s Directory of Essex 1848]

The Rose Garden at White Lodge, Richmond [undated]                                                                             Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Sheffield Independent – 07 February 1898

Ella taught herself paint but she had little by way of formal artistic training, apart from  a few informal lessons from family friend Sir James Linton. This connection maybe how  she managed to have a picture accepted in 1893 at an exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours of which Linton was a leading member.  The same year she was presented at court. This was a significant step for her art as well as socially.  There are newspaper reports of other paintings of hers being shown in amateur or society charity fundraising shows, including one  from 1896 about her sketching the gardens of Windsor, Frogmore and Osborne for Queen Victoria. The queen must have become a became a big fan of Ella and her work since she bought 26 paintings between then and 1898.  Some of these were used as gifts, 4 entered the official Royal Collection while others are thought to be in the ‘private’ collections at Windsor, Balmoral or Sandringham.

Villa Arconati, Lake Como,                       Royal Collection Trust

Ella Du Cane’s first formal exhibition was at Graves Gallery in Pall Mall where she showed 57 watercolours.  It was visited by the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family, who also bought some of the pictures. A report of the exhibition says “she first began to use her pencil seriously only three years ago.”

In an interview in 1902 for Girl’s Realm where she was described as “essentially an Essex girl” [which is my excuse for using that in my title!] Ella explained that she didn’t have a studio and preferred to paint outdoors wherever possible.

One of England’s Stateliest Homes, Blickling Hall, Norfolk from Girl’s Realm

The list of  the British gardens where she mentioned working was impressive: Chatsworth, Holland House, The White Farm at Crichel, Broughton Castle, Hinchinbrooke, Haddon, Cawdor, Hartrig, Carbery, Drummond Castle and Gwydyr Castle. Unfortunately I’ve only been able to trace  a few images of her British work.

The gardens at Cawdor Castle, seatn of Lord Leven, from Girls Realm

But it was foreign gardens that already attracted her attention, with southern Italy as her “favourite painting ground.”

St James’s Gazette – Thursday 20 March 1902

Travel on the continent was obviously part of the family routine and Florence once said that before the First World War she hadn’t spent a winter in Britain for more than 20 years.These trips gave Ella opportunities to paint on the Riviera, Madeira, and in Italy before her next exhibition in 1900.

Wisteria at Kameido, from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Irises from Flowers and gardens of Japan

But the sisters also travelling further afield than standard European destinations.  The spent six months one winter in the Caribbean and in 1902 Ella exhibited paintings done there, but also in Algiers as well as Italian and English gardens. They went east too because in 1904 she exhibited ” about 100 paintings of flower-bright  Japan” and Ceylon. This was a sell-out and she earned £2000.  Of course she was not the first western artist to visit Japan and work – Alfred Parsons, whose work she greatly admired, had gone in 1893. Like Ella, he too produced sentimental tranquil images  that drew little from any authentic Japanese traditions.

The success of these early exhibitions gave Ella a lot of freedom and in 1906 she moved out from Mountains, leasing Beacon Hill, a small cottage on the estate, where she was also able to establish her own garden. [Next week’s post will be about the gardens of Mountains and Beacon Hill].

“In the Garden, Isola Bella, Lago Maggiore”  from The Italian Lakes

Azaleas on Lake Como, from Richard Bagot’s  The Italian Lakes

In that 1902 interview she spoke about her ambition to publish a book of garden paintings, and it wasn’t long before her wish was fulfilled. Her exhibitions must have attracted the attention of someone at the firm of A&C Black who were   well established travel publishers. In the high day of empire in the years leading up to WW1 they published dozens of books about the far-flung corners of the world including Tibet and Nepal, Burma, Kashmir and China as well as better known haunts.

Ella’s first major commission was to illustrate Richard Bagot’s The Italian Lakes  published in 1905. Her paintings “radiated sunshine and their subtle colouring stirs the imagination” crooned one reviewer. [Belfast Newsletter,  31 October 1905]

Outside a Tea House

Next, several of her paintings were used to illustrate John Finnemore’ s 1907 book on Japan in their “Peeps at Many Lands” series.  

Illustrated London News – 13 June 1908

The success of this, and presumably the continuing popularity of Japanese culture and design in Britain inspired another commission.  Ella and Florence returned to Japan that year to put together a book on Japanese gardens. They appear to been there for about a year all told, although than at some point they also visited China.

The Scarlet Maple from The Flowers and Gardens of Japan

On their return Ella exhibited nearly 100 paintings in 1908 at the Fine Art Gallery, most of which were sold during the private viewing, including several of which were bought by Edward VII. However not all the critics were favourable as can be seen from the tart comments  from Illustrated London News.

Azaleas at Nagaoka from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

The Flowers and Gardens of Japan was published in 1908. Florence’s text  was light, and made no pretence of being a full botanical or horticultural account but merely some stories about those plants “most remarkable for their beauty and profusion and which are most associated with Japan.”  It contained the popular and obvious favourites such as wisteria, iris, bamboo and spring blossom.

Azaleas in a Kyoto garden  from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Nor did Florence attempt much explanation of Japanese garden design, partly owing to want of space” and partly because it was the most complicated form of gardening int he world” and she did not wish to “weary the reader with technical information” which, if they really wanted it, “could be found in Mr Conder’s volume on Landscape Gardening in Japan.”

A Landscape Garden from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Josiah Conder  was an English architect who had been invited to work in Japan in 1877. He fell in love with the country and remained there until his death in 1920. He was probably the first European to make a proper study of Japanese garden and landscape design which he wrote about in Landscape Gardening in Japan published in 1893.  It became the biggest single influence on western understanding of Japanese gardens.  The sisters clearly had read his work and  I think it’s quite likely they would have met him on when they were in Japan.

Satake Gardens from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Lilies on the rock, Atami, from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Florence certainly absorbed a lot of Conder’s  sensitivity to the profound differences between western and Japanese garden thinking, and had clearly done a lot of garden visiting, and question asking. She understood that “no western gardener could ever hope to construct a garden representing a portion of the natural scenery of Japan – which is the aim and object of every good Japanese landscape garden however small – because however long he might study the original scene he would never arrive at the japanese conception of it or realise what it conveyed to the mind of a Japanese.”

Chrysanthemums, from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Reviews were mixed. Burlington Magazine [Dec 1908] saying that “greater artists have given us more forcible impressions of Japanese life and colour; more learned authors have described them in print; yet we don’t remember any instance in which author and artist have come together with a more attractive result.”  However others were more critical. The Evening Standard, saying that Ella’s paintings while “clear and decorative” did not display ” the special palette… of the country ” and that “more of the inner spiritual comprehension of the subject is to be found in the letterpress than in the illustrations.” [30th Oct 1908]. Nevertheless several of the illustrations were turned into postcards and used as souvenirs of the Japanese British Exhibition of 1910.

Whilst in Japan the sisters met and visited gardens with Isabella Robertson Christie [who was also usually known as Ella] who was to return to Scotland and create the famous Japanese garden at Cowden Castle in Perthshire. [More on that in another post one day]

The Old Wisteria from Flowers and Gardens of Japan

Roses at Santa Luzia from  The Flowers and Gardens of Madeira 

They followed this up with  The Flowers and Gardens of Madeira which A&C Black published in 1908. Whether this entailed a return visit or was based on notes and sketches from their earlier visit is unclear but Ella certainly returned to Madeira to paint in 1910 [Telegraph 23.4.1910] and 64 pictures were exhibited in Bond Street later that year.

Pride of Madeira and Daisies from  The Flowers and Gardens of Madeira

After Madeira she was offered the chance to do illustrations for a book on Sicily at £4 an image, but turned it down deciding instead on one about The Canary Islands in 1911.  This was, according to one academic study, one of the very first British travel books entirely dedicated to the islands.

Botanical Gardens at Orotava from The Canary Islands

The  trip there led to yet another exhibition of garden paintings, although the Canary pictures were accompanied  by some Essex gardens painted in-between the foreign tours.  Another exhibition in 1912 included paintings from Teneriffe and southern Spain.

In 1913 it was Egypt’s turn to get the du Cane treatment, although Florence was only the author of a small part of the text, most of which was done by  John Todd. On the Banks of the Nile was not primarily about gardens, and clearly involved extensive travel along the river from the delta deep down into Nubia. Florence later said it was a trip taken much against the advice of Lord Kitchener.

La Paz from The Canary Islands

Again reviews were mixed. Illustrated london News [06 December 1913 ]was particularly cutting about “the monotony of colouring” in Ella’s paintings”one is tempted to ask whether the sun never sets in Egypt and no cool shadows rest upon the waters of the Nile… taken separately the plates have a delicate charm but in the bulk they lack variety of treatment.”

There were no more long overseas trips before, or as far as I can see, during the Great War.  Once that started Florence went to France and ran a hospital for the Croix Rouge, twice being captured by the Germans. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre by Marechal Foch personally for her bravery. I have not yet discovered what Ella did but she appears to have disappeared from the public arena completely.

After the war the appetite for travel books seems to have declined and Blacks cut the number they published drastically. There were no more for the sisters.  There were family problems too. By 1919  their brothers was in serious debt and had to sell the bulk of the Braxted estate.  Lady Du Cane retained Mountains, and 50 acres of land around it and Florence lived there with her mother, while Ella remained at Beacon Hill.   They now switched their energy from travel writing to gardening and with equal, if quieter, success, as I will try and show next week.

San Sebastian, La Gomera from The Canary Islands