Background
She was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1852.
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Fanny Osborne
Edit ProfileCareer
Osborne"s parents began cattle farming at Rosalie Bay in the south of the island. As Osborne did not date her paintings it is not known when she commenced painting the indigenous plants of Great Barrier Island. However, over a period of some decades her work reached the highest quality and is now greatly appreciated from both artistic and scientific points of view.
Her paintings of the Adams mistletoe (Trilepidia adamsii) are particularly important as this species is now considered extinct, and no colour photographs of it exist.
Osborne died in Auckland on 12 March 1934 and is buried on Great Barrier Island. A collection of Fanny Osborne"s paintings of Great Barrier Island plants was published in 1983 by Jeanne Goulding of the Auckland Museum, whose botany department holds the largest collection of Osborne"s works.
