painter, art critic and town planner, was born in South Australia on 18 January 1879, fourth of the eight children of William and Julie Rossi. She studied art at the Adelaide School of Design and had established a modest reputation as a portrait painter before moving to Western Australia in 1905, where she continued her painting studies under Florence Fuller . Daisy received a number of portrait commissions and a large portrait by her won a certificate at the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne. Encouraged by Fuller, Rossi went to London and studied at the Grosvenor School under Walter Donne, winning first and second prizes for poster drawing. She visited France and saw the work of the Impressionists. On her return to Perth, she secured work in the Art Department at Fremantle Technical School in 1911. She held a solo exhibition in 1915, and her work of this period shows the strong impact that French Impressionism had made on her. Included were oil paintings of WA wildflowers, the subject for which she is best known locally.

In December 1918, at the age of thirty-nine, Daisy married the architect George Temple-Poole but continued to use 'Rossi’ as her painting name. In 1920 their only child, Iseult, was born and Daisy became immersed in family life. As well, she became the first woman member of the Town Planning Board and wrote for various magazines and newspapers. In 1920 a devastating studio fire destroyed most of the work she had done in Europe.

Why should Australia always be represented by dull colored bush, huge, unwieldy eucalypts? We should have more frequently artists who will rise up and say, “Australia shall be shown in riotous, beautiful, blatant coloring”

- she stated in an interview in 1924. That year she was represented in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London, with two wildflower pictures and a series of panels. But bad eyesight troubled her and soon afterwards she ceased to paint. For several years she taught art to kindergarten students at her 'Rossi School of Art’.

Rossi was interested in women’s issues, believing that women should be more involved in decision making. In a 1918 interview, she said:

Man has no more right to say that all women should be domestic workers against their inclination than that women should insist on all men becoming gardeners or handy men around the house.

After her husband died in 1934 she lived in the suburb of South Perth. In her seventies she began to paint wildflower studies again. In the late 1960s she moved to Victoria to be near her daughter. She died in 1974 at the age of ninety-five.

Writers:

Gooding, Janda

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011