Born: 1930, Australia
Died: NA
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Celia Elizabeth Prince
This biography has been shared from The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Celia Rosser is recognised as one of the world’s best botanical artists, and for having painted all the species of one genus, Banksia. These were published as a 3-volume folio edition with text written by Alex George. All the paintings were executed using wild-collected specimens, many collected by Rosser. Since 2002 the Celia Rosser Medal for Botanical Art has been awarded by the Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, for outstanding exhibits at their biennial exhibition “The Art of Botanical Illustration”.
Chronology
1970
Career position – Science Faculty Artist, Monash University
1974
Career position – University Botanical Artist, Monash University
1977
Award – Jill Smythies Award, for botanical illustration, Linnean Society of London
1981
Award – Honorary MSc, Monash University
1981 – 2000
Career position – Produced drawings of all the banksias of Australia in 3 volumes
1995
Award – Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM)
1999
Award – Honorary PhD, Monash University
2001
Taxonomy event – Banksia rosserae Olde and Marriott named in her honour