Dr Helen Hewson Traditional Botanical Art Award

Helen Joan Hewson

Born June 24, 1938; died October 29, 2007

Dr Helen Hewson, botanist, dog breeder and judge, author and botanical artist, died peacefully aged 69, after a long illness. In all her areas of interest, Helen was an inspiration to her friends and colleagues and a gifted teacher, with a ready, distinctive laugh.

By profession, Helen was a botanist, someone who loved and lived for plants, who knew them, and cared passionately about them. She brought the same passion to her “other” professional career, in the dog world, as a teacher, breeder and judge, and, in her retirement, to a third love, botanical art.

Helen was born in Benalla, Victoria, and matriculated from the high school there before undertaking university studies first in Melbourne and then at the University of Sydney, where she completed a B.Sc. with first class honours, and then, in 1967, a PhD in the genetics and classification of a group of small plants known as liverworts.

In 1969, Helen took a position in Canberra, teaching botany at the Australian National University, before beginning the work for which she will be chiefly remembered, working for 20 years with the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) on the multi-volume series the Flora of Australia. Helen’s contribution to the Flora is enormous—she worked as a writer and editor on more than 25 plant families spanning nine volumes of the Flora, and produced scientific illustrations for many of these. Her work remains in daily use throughout Australia. For the two years before her official retirement (Helen never really retired from work), Helen was Deputy Director of the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research at CSIRO Black Mountain.

In parallel with her botanical career, Helen was pursuing a second interest, in dogs. With her husband Leon Freund she first became interested in Australian Cattle Dogs, but after Leon’s death in 1975 she concentrated on breeding and exhibiting Hungarian Pulis. Helen also gained her Working Dog Licence and became a respected national judge. Helen went on to gain a Dog Judging Diploma with the Canine Studies Institute, UK. This led to her setting up Canine Evaluators of Australasia to run Canine Studies Institute correspondence courses (under licence) in the Australasian region. Helen applied her knowledge of genetics to dogs as well as plants, and her writing and lecturing on genetics and dog breeding represent a major contribution in this field. Her writing skills won her a Pal Pulitzer Award for dog writing.

In retirement, Helen continued her botanical and canine interests, as well as a third interest, that of botanical art. She had always produced her own scientific botanical illustrations, using pen and ink, but now she had leisure to become a watercolour artist, painting the plants she loved, and exhibiting successfully in shows. In recognition of her contributions as a mentor in the sceintific aspects of botanical art, the Wildlife and Botanical Artists group established a prize in her honour - the “Dr. Helen Hewson Award for Traditional Botanical Art” which was awarded for the first time in September 2007.

Retirement also provided the opportunity to write the book “Australia – 300 years of Botanical Illustration” a beautifully illustrated account of the history and science of plant illustration in Australia and the development of botany as a science in the world and Australia. Helen was a champion of botanical artists, past and present, and was instrumental in promoting the work of the 19th Century Australian woman artist Ellis Rowan.

Helen inspired a generation of enthusiasts in three separate fields of endeavour; each group being amazed to discover the range of her activities and the energy she generated. Helen is survived by her partner of 20 years, Russ Kennedy, and her two brothers Bill and John.