Maria Brownrigg was a genteel woman of the mid-19th century who learnt how to draw and paint.
Recreational art was viewed as a suitable female accomplishment in the upper and middle classes at the time.
But the mother of six would never have intended or expected her only known work to go on public display.
Brownrigg's 1857 watercolour and collage, An Evening At Yarra Cottage, Port Stephens, has been purchased by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) after being held for more than 150 years in family and private collections.
The painting depicts her six children — Marcus (at the piano), Emma, Annie, Katie, Crosbie and Carrie — in the drawing room of their home at Carrington on the northern shores of Port Stephens in New South Wales.
"It's actually an incredibly rich and palpable self-portrait of the artist even though she hasn't actually put herself in the picture," NPG curator Joanna Gilmour said.
"You get this ... very strong sense of who she was and what her life was like simply by looking at the way in which she has portrayed her six children."
The work is regarded as highly significant because it was rare for paintings on paper by women of this period to survive.
It also provides a detailed insight into colonial life in the Victorian era, including the choice of furnishings, fashion and family pastimes.
"It really is the most exquisite and painstaking record of this domestic interior, as well as an incredibly intimate and affectionate portrayal of these particular subjects," Ms Gilmour said.
Naval wife, mother and chatelaine
Maria Caroline Brownrigg (1812-80) married Royal Navy officer Marcus Brownrigg in Cape Town in 1830.
After stints in England and India, the family sailed to New South Wales in 1852 where Commander Brownrigg was appointed superintendent of the Australian Agricultural Company.
Ms Gilmour said little was known about Brownrigg from historical records.
"She exists on the margins of history.
"Like most 19th-century women, the only reason we know about her is because of who she was married to and who she was fathered by."
At the time of the painting, Commander Brownrigg was in Sydney attempting to clear his name after his dismissal from the company the previous year.
"Maria would have been the chatelaine of her husband's household," Ms Gilmour said.
"She would have been someone whose role it was to cultivate and demonstrate gentility.
"Creating artworks like this ... is one of the things that women had at their disposal to demonstrate that they were accomplished and women of a certain status or a certain class."
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