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Ellen Robbins (1828 – 1905) was a 19th-century American botanical illustrator known for paintings of wildflowers and autumn leaves.
She was one of the contributors to the first annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society in 1867/1868. (2026). 9780300225891, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300225891
In addition to publishing books, Robbins sold original paintings through a shop in Boston. Her work became fashionable in both America and England, and she began painting botanical designs on china and even furniture for her clients. In the 1840s, she began creating textile designs, as well as designs for tiles and needlework. In the 1840s, she began also to teach watercolor painting.
In the late 1860s, after the introduction of chromolithography, the lithographer Louis Prang hired her to create a series of flowers and autumn leaves specifically to be sold as prints. Through contacts among prominent Bostonians like Henry Ward Beecher, she was invited to create a frieze (since destroyed) at Wellesley College outside Boston.
With increasing success, Robbins was able to travel abroad and to take time off in the summer, when she often spent time in Maine with the writer Celia Thaxter. She became one of the first of a series of prominent artists who stayed at Thaxter's Appledore House hotel, where she painted the flowers in its famous garden.
An inscription on one of her paintings suggests that she got married in 1858, but her husband's name is not recorded.
In 1896, she published a series of articles in New England Magazine reflecting on her life, entitled "Reminiscences of a Flower Painter."
==Gallery==
Valauskas, Edward J. "Ellen Robbins, New England's extraordinary watercolorist and floral artist". Chicago Botanic Garden website, October 2012.
Curry, David Park. Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited. Denver Art Museum, 1990.
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