|
Butler, Lady [née Thompson, Elizabeth Southerden]
(b Lausanne, 3 Nov 1846; d Gormanston, Ireland, 2 Oct 1933). English painter. She was the elder daughter of Thomas James and Christiana (née Weller) Thompson, members of London’s literary and artistic circles and close friends of Charles Dickens. Both she and her sister (the poet and essayist Alice Meynell) were educated by their father. She spent much of her childhood in Italy, but the family returned to England in 1860 so that she could have professional tuition. She became a student in the elementary class at the Female School of Art, South Kensington, London, and, after a further interval of travel and residence on the Continent, obtained a place in the antique and life classes at the school in 1866. Her main rival for academic honours there was Kate Greenaway. In 1869 the family lived in Florence, where she studied drawing at the Accademia di Belle Arti with Giuseppe Bellucci (1827–82). Her first recorded painting was a religious work, The Magnificat (1869–71; Ventnor, St Wilfred), executed after her conversion to Roman Catholicism. The work was refused by the hanging committee of the Royal Academy, London, in 1871, and this may have deterred her from attempting any other religious painting.
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
