painter and musician, eldest daughter and second child of John and Mary Ann Marsh of Sidmouth, South Devon, seems to have received instruction in music (from whom and at what level is not known) and in later life worked professionally as both a teacher and performer, as did her brother Stephen Marsh. On 19 June 1828 she married the painter John Skinner Prout (q.v.) and went to live in Cornwall; their first child was born there on 7 April 1829. During the next ten years the Prouts had seven more children but Maria nevertheless continued to work as a music teacher, as well as moving house several times within Penzance and then to Bristol and London.

Maria Prout, her husband and children came to Australia in the Royal Sovereign , which left Plymouth on 1 August 1840 and arrived at Sydney on 16 December. On 24 March 1841 she held a concert in the Royal Victoria Theatre. The Australian reviewed her performance on the piano in glowing terms: 'It is as gratifying as it is astonishing, to find in this remote part of the British dominions, talents in the arts and the elegancies of life, which would meet with commendation and applause from the most cultivated society in the metropolis of the empire’. Early in 1842 her brother Stephen arrived at Sydney in the Sir Edward Paget and together they gave a concert at the same theatre on 9 March 1842. The following month the Sydney Morning Herald , writing mainly about Skinner Prout’s Sydney Illustrated , drew attention to Maria Prout 'whose professional talents in the sister arts of painting and music are well known’. None of her paintings nor any description of them, however, is known today.

Details of Maria Prout’s journey to Van Diemen’s Land in 1844 and her return to England in 1848 are the same as those given for her husband. She died at Camden Town, London, on 2 November 1871.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011