natural history painter, compiled two albums of large, strong watercolours titled Wildflowers around Newcastle, New South Wales (NLA) depicting almost sixty species of local plants collected between December 1832 and August 1836. Acquired chiefly from local heath-lands but also from rainforest areas, they are botanically identified, dated and sometimes sourced with the names of collectors. Her Scarlet Creeper , for instance, is annotated: 'Paty got this 3 Miles on the Maitland Road / Kennedia rubicunda / New Castle [sic] Septr second 1833’, while Native Rock Lily, Newcastle Septr 1835 was brought by her husband 'from the Glebe’. The Native Arum / Feby 24th 1836 was a 'Parasitical Plant – Found on the Maitland road by Mr. Wilton [Rev. Charles Wilton, the local Anglican clergyman and keen botanist] attached to the bark of a Swamp Oak’. She painted it on 11 August 1836. Miss Robb brought her an Eriostemon salicifolum from Shepherd’s Hill, Newcastle, on 30 August 1833, while several specimens were copied from the album of Mrs Auley, a friend at Maitland, in September 1834. Two plants are triumphantly annotated: 'Mrs. A. has it not’.
Paty was married to the deputy assistant-commissary at Newcastle and a watercolour view of their house, Mr Paty’s Residence, Newcastle (c.1836, NLA), has also been attributed to her. She died there on 17 October 1836 and was buried in Christ Church of England Cemetery, in the grounds of the present Newcastle Cathedral.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
