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(Lady Butler) Elizabeth Southerden Thompson (November 3, 1846 - October 2, 1933)
(Lady Butler) Elizabeth Southerden Thompson
(November 3, 1846 - October 2, 1933) |
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history paintings, military battle scenes Art Work
| Name: |
(Lady Butler) Elizabeth Southerden Thompson |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
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| Nationality: |
British |
| Birth: |
November 3, 1846 |
| Death: |
October 2, 1933 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
history paintings, military battle scenes |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
Writing in the Daily Telegraph in May 1874, the critic George Sala described the stir caused by Elizabeth Thompson's painting Calling the Roll after an Engagement, Crimea at that year's Royal Academy exhibition: 'to the general public. Miss Thompson is as new as the Albert Memorial at Kensington; and it is for that reason that we hail her appearance with this honest, manly Crimean picture, as full of genius as it is of industry. We say that this sign is a wholesome one; because in every work of art executed by a woman, and commanding public acceptance and
applause, we see a manacle knocked off a woman's wrist, and a shackle hacked
off her ankle.'
Brought up in a wealthy and cultured family, Elizabeth Thompson and her sister Alice {who became a poet and essayist) were given early encouragement in their choice of work. Nevertheless, outside their supportive circle Thompson faced t h e restrictions hindering women embarking on careers as artists during this period. Frustrated with the South Kensington Schools, she also left the Female School of Art, as working from the nude was forbidden, and enrolled in a private art school in order to draw from the model. She described her decision to become a military painter as owing to an early awareness that it was an area overlooked by English artists and she particularly admired contemporary French painters of military action such as Edouard Detaille.
In 1867 Thompson made her exhibiting debut at an exhibition of the Society of Female Artists with Study of Horses in Sunshine and Fighting Bits. She showed her work there regularly until she was in her seventies, and became an Honorary Member. In 1873 she showed at the Royal Academy for the first time (she was to exhibit there for the next fifty years), but it was the following year's exhibition that made her name. Her 1874 submission became one of the most talked about Academy pictures of the nineteenth century and proved extremely popular in reproduction. According to the Art Journal critic, the painting's power
came from its refusal to shy away from "the terrible havoc of war'. Thompson's refusal to glorify military action is likely to have resonated with the burgeoning social conscience of the 1870s. and with contemporary moves to reform the army. The Remnants of an Army: Jellalabad, January 13th, 1842 represents one of the greatest disasters to have befallen the military at that time, and can be interpreted as strongly critical of British strategy.
Thompson was also admired for her representation of landscape and light. In his Academy Notes of 1875 Ruskin remarked on the sky in her painting: 'I have not seen the like since Turner's death.' In her autobiography (London 1922), Thompson described working en plein air with her mother, preparing for her painting The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras (1875, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne): 'We had a great difficulty in finding any rye at Henley, it having all been cut. except a little patch which we at length discovered ... Mamma and I then went to work, but oh! horror, my oil brushes were missing. I had left them in the chaise... So mamma went frantically to work with two shiny water-colour brushes to get down tints whilst I drew down forms in pencil.'
Following her marriage to Major (afterwards Sir) William Butler in 1877, she combined her thriving career with roles as army wife and mother (of six children), moving between residences in England, including Dover Castle, and
military business abroad in Egypt and South Africa. Despite her success Lady
Butler was barred from election to the Royal Academy (she was nominated three times between 1879 and 1881). The members decreed that the Academy's constitution, defining suitable candidates as 'men of fair moral character', did not allow for the admittance of women.
Lady Butler continued to exhibit and to write. In addition to her autobiography, she published Letters from the Holy Land (London 1903) and From Sketchbook and Diary (London 1909). But her art declined in popularity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the painting she submitted to the 1924 Royal
Academy was rejected. There has been a critical re-evaluation of Lady Butler's
art in recent years. An article by Krzysztof Cieszkowski on her life and work appeared in History Today in February 1982, and a major exhibition, Lady Butler: Battle Artist, toured from the National Army Museum in 1987-8. It has been argued that her work, although often patriotic, is not blindly so. She did not choose to celebrate the higher ranks of military life, but focused instead on the experiences of ordinary soldiers, and her politics were sometimes surprising. In common with her husband, who was an Irish Catholic and nicknamed 'the Radical General', she shared an ardent belief in home rule for Ireland. Butler's painting Evict ion (1890,
Department of Irish Folklore. University of Dublin) represents a scene she
reportedly witnessed in County Wicklow: a woman standing among the ruins of her cottage as troops march away. |
Samples of Work
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