As the first Australian artist to succeed overseas, Adelaide Ironside received a private audience with the Pope, sold a painting to the Prince of Wales, and astonished poet Robert Browning with her “enthusiasm and wild ways”.
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But before becoming a star in Europe, she found fame as a feisty 23-year-old joining 500 troops as they prepared for a potential Russian invasion of Sydney Harbour.
Dr Lindsey, South Australia's history advocate, tells Adelaide's life story in her new biography of the artist called Wild Love.
The granddaughter of a convict forger, Adelaide became famous for her paintings of Australian wildflowers and known in Europe as “the Australian flower”, but she was a rebel at heart.
At 23, Adelaide was already well-known at least among Sydney's radical set after having more than 20 poems published in the radical newspapers.
But in 1855, weeks before she and her mother left for Europe, Adelaide became a celebrated figure for inspiring troops preparing to defend against a feared Russian invasion.
The Crimean War was raging between Russia and an alliance including Britain.
“The governor has put a call out for all young men to come forward and volunteer their services should the Russians suddenly appear in Sydney Harbour,” Dr Lindsey says.
“And this was actually considered a very real threat.
“People were building towers on their houses, there were tunnels dug underneath Sydney, just to make sure that we were well prepared for this imminent arrival of the 'Russkies'.
“And so those voluntary corps were really taking themselves quite seriously as defenders of colonial society.”