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Joy Adamson's botanical and ethnic portraits on view at Nairobi National Museum


http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/whatson/images/3734955

 Joy Adamson, 'Calodendron Capense', watercolour. Courtesy: Nature in Art Trust.
Most people would know naturalist Joy Adamson through her book, Born Free, about her life with Elsa the lion cub. Austrian-born Adamson (1910-1980) spent about 40 years on game reserves in Kenya, but she had another passion.

Born Friederike Victoria Gessner, she moved to Kenya in 1935, the year she married her first husband Victor von Klarwill. However, she met botanist, Peter Bally, on the ship to Africa, whom she married in 1938. It was Bally who nicknamed her Joy. During her travels throughout Kenya, with Bally, Adamson began to paint botanical images of flora and fauna.

But she met George Adamson, a game warden, and married him in 1943. In 1956, the Adamsons rescued a female lion cub they called Elsa, which they raised on their reserve. Elsa the lioness inspired three books by Joy Adamson: Born Free (1960), Living Free (1961), and Forever Free (1962). Elsa died in 1961 and is buried in the Meru Game Reserve in Kenya. All three books were made into films – Born Free in 1966. Joy was killed in 1980 (her ashes buried next to Elsa’s) and George too was killed in 1989.

Joy’s paintings of plants, accurately drawn, are currently on display at the Nairobi National Museum. She painted over 300 flowers and 600 ethnic portraits of traditional Kenyans. The Colonial Government of Kenya commissioned her to paint portraits of 22 tribes in Kenya to preserve their heritage. All of these belong to the Nairobi National Museum. When the museum was undergoing renovation in the late 1990s, they put her collection in storage. On Monday May 19, 2014, they launched the return of the paintings at the Joy Adamson Exhibition in the museum’s Hall of Kenya.

The exhibition (until June 2015) will show 51 of her watercolour paintings, with information of her work as a naturalist, author, and illustrator.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/137372/Joy-Adamson-painting-a-portrait-of-a-Masai-woman-in




 

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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