Bedford, Lady Ethel   (1848 - 1913)

Amateur painter, wife of Admiral Sir George Bedford, Governor of Western Australia, who painted wildflowers in the environs of Perth and Albany from 1902-1909. She exhibited watercolours of wildflowers with the WA Society of Arts in 1908. Fifty-two of her wildflower paintings and her husband's landscape paintings are held by the Battye Library. Lady Bedford donated a chalice and paten to Beaconsfield Anglican Church in memory of her husband. This was made by Levinsons but can no longer be traced.

'Truthful Thomas' described her as:

"The gentle consort of the representative of the throne in Western Australia indicates by her actions, to those of her sex whose social head she is, that her ideal of woman's work is the work of home. Her charming and pleasing personality express rather the qualities of a helpmate, than those of an individuality, being of that clinging depending nature, so extolled by the writers of half a century ago."

Source: pers.com. Dorothy Erickson (10/4/2013)
WA Society of Arts exhibition catalogues. ‘Truthful Thomas’, Through the Spy-glass. Short Sketches of Well-known Westralians As Others See Them. Perth: Praagh & Lloyd, 1905.
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: