Background
The daughter of Mary Johnson and Downes Edwards, a farmer and engineer who had a number of successful inventions, she was born on her father’s farm in Surbiton.
The daughter of Mary Johnson and Downes Edwards, a farmer and engineer who had a number of successful inventions, she was born on her father’s farm in Surbiton.
She spent her early years with her family in Surbiton, the Isle of Manitoba, South Kensington, and Chelsea, London. They had one son, born in 1867, but John Freer died in 1869. At this time and over the following decade Mary Ellen was submitting her work to the annual Royal Academy shows.
Her illustration Waifs from the Great City was included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World.