THE LIFE AND ART OF MILDRED ANNE BUTLER.

Butler was born to an Anglo-Irish family, members of the land-owning Protestant Ascendancy, and lived at Kilmurry House, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. She was a professional artist during the latter part of the nineteenth and the opening decades of the twentieth century, when it was rare for women to succeed as artists in a male-dominated profession. Her achievements were many. Her watercolour paintings were exhibited in London at the Society of Lady Artists, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, Royal Academy, Royal Watercolour Society, Dudley Gallery, and New Gallery; in Dublin at the Watercolour Society of Ireland; and in Belfast at the Rodman Gallery Belfast and the Belfast Art Society/Ulster Academy of Arts.

The Chantrey Bequest fund purchased her painting The Morning Bath for the British nation in 1896 – a distinction she shared with Sir John Everett Millais, J. W. Waterhouse, Sir F. Leighton Bart PRA and John Singer Sargent. Before acquiring Butler’s painting, the fund had bought from only one other woman artist, the American Anna Lea Merritt. Butler was elected Associate Member of the Royal Water Colour Society in 1896 and a full member in 1937, sharing this achievement with fellow Irish painter Rose Barton, English artists Helen Allingham, Clara Montalba, and Canadian–born Elisabeth Stanhope Forbes who lived in Newlyn, Cornwall. 

Author

Tom Duffy is an art historian, curator, and lecturer in art history at the Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in Dún Laoghaire. He has curated numerous exhibitions, including two at the United Arts Club in Dublin, showcasing fine art.