Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1910 Troppau, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic)

Died: 1980 Shaba National Reserve, Kenya

Other name/s: Friederike Viktoria Gessner

Biography

Naturalist and artist, Joy Adamson was born Friederike Viktoria Gessner in 1910 in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), to parents, Viktor Gessner, a civil servant, and Traute Greipel, a self-taught artist. Following their divorce in 1922, Anderson was raised by her maternal grandmother in Vienna, whom Anderson cited as a major influence on her life and work. Adamson attended boarding school for four years, where she took a keen interest in art and music. It is unclear in which year Adamson moved to the United Kingdom, but it is known that she attended the Slade School of Fine Art, London.

In 1935, Adamson married her first husband, Viktor von Klarwill, a Jewish Austrian, who sent Adamson to Africa to find a safe home for the couple to escape from increasing religious persecution. In 1937 Adamson moved from England to Kenya and began painting east African plants, while travelling the country’s seven major ecological environments with her second husband, botanist John Bally, completing a series of around 500 scientifically accurate colour paintings. These detailed botanical images, which have been widely reproduced in handbooks and textbooks, were recognised for their scientific value and attention to detail, and led to Adamson receiving the Royal Horticultural Society's Grenfell gold medal in 1947. In 1944, Adamson married her third husband, George Adamson, British senior wildlife warden with the Kenyan game department, with whom she travelled extensively on safari. Inspired by her travels and the people she encountered, in 1945 Adamson began creating portraits of individuals from different Kenyan communities, depicting sitters from the shoulders upwards, wearing traditional dress and jewellery. The British colonial government subsequently commissioned a series of portraits of the 22 most important tribes of Kenya, which led to Adamson eventually creating over 800 paintings, each with information about the person and their community. These works were later published in Adam’s 1975 book The Peoples of Kenya. Adamson was latterly best known for her conservation work. The Adamsons helped to create the first wildlife reserves in Kenya and pioneered the ‘restocking’ strategy: re-releasing into the wild animals that had been held in captivity. Adamson received international attention with her 1960 book Born Free, which tells the story of Elsa the lioness, the first lion to be rehabilitated to live on its own again in the wild. Her watercolour paintings of Elsa were published in the book Joy Adamson’s Africa. She founded both the World Wildlife Fund and the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal, cementing her legacy in conservation.

In 1968 her watercolours were displayed in public in England for the first time in the group show Flower Artists of the World, at the Tryon Gallery, London. In 1972 the Tryon Gallery celebrated Adamson`s art more broadly with the exhibition Joy Adamson's Africa, featuring East African plants, wild flowers, animals and birds, mostly painted over a period of ten years from 1937. The proceeds from the sale of her works went to Adamson`s charity. After the Tryon Gallery show, the remaining paintings were given to the Trust’s Cheltenham-based secretary, Jean Aucutt, a close friend of Adamson’s, and remained hidden for nearly four decades, locked in a vault in Cheltenham, until they were displayed again locally at the Ellenborough Park Hotel in 2011. In 1977 Adamson was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, formally recognising her contributions to the field. Adamson died in 1980 after being stabbed by a disgruntled former employee while working at the Shaba National Reserve in Kenya. Her body was cremated in Nairobi and her ashes spread on the graves of Elsa the lioness and Pippa the cheetah in Meru National Park, Kenya. Following her death, Adamson’s artwork was donated to the National Museums of Kenya. Her correspondence with the biologist Sir Julian Huxley is held at the Woodson Research Center, Rice University, Houston, USA.

Related books

Karin Nusko, 'Adamson, Joy' in Ilse Korotin ed., BiografiA: Lexikon Österreichischer Frauen, vol. 1 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 29-30
Anne E Neimark, Wild Heart: the Story of Joy Adamson, Author of Born Free (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1999)
Joy Adamson, Friends from the Forest (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1980)
Joy Adamson, Queen of Shaba: The Story of an African Leopard (London: Harvill and Collins Press, 1980)
Joy Adamson, The Searching Spirit: Joy Adamson’s Autobiography (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1978)
Joy Adamson, Peoples of Kenya, (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1975)
Joy Adamson, Pippa’s Challenge (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1972)
`Adamson Watercolours`, Country Life, Vol. 152, Fasc. 3928, 5 October 1972, p. 815
Joy Adamson, Joy Adamson’s Africa (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1972)
Joy Adamson, Pippa: The Cheetah and its Cubs (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1970)
Joy Adamson, The Spotted Sphinx (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1969)
David Wolfers, `The World's Flowers in Pictures: an Exhibition at the Tryon`, The Field, Vol. 231, Fasc. 6019, 30 May 1968, p. 1077
Joy Adamson, Forever Free (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1962)
Joy Adamson, Living Free: The Story of Elsa and her Cubs (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1961)
Joy Adamson, Elsa: The Story of a Lioness (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1961)
Joy Adamson, Born Free (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1960)
A.J. Jex-Blake, Gardening in East Africa: A Practical Handbook (Longmans, Green and Co.,1957)

Public collections

National Museums of Kenya

Related organisations

Slade School of Fine Art (student)
Royal Horticultural Society (gold medal winner)

Selected exhibitions

Joy Adamson - Botanical Art, The Sunbury Embroidery Gallery (2019)
Charity Exhibition of Joy Adamson's Work, Ellenborough Park, Cheltenham (2011)
Joy Adamson's Africa, The Tryon Gallery (1972)
Flower Artists of the World, Tryon Gallery (1968)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Joy Adamson]