Mildred Anne Butler facts for kids

Mildred Anne Butler (born January 11, 1858 – died October 11, 1941) was a famous Irish artist. She painted beautiful pictures using watercolour and oil paints. Her art often showed landscapes, everyday life, and animals.

Mildred Anne lived most of her life in Kilmurry, Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland. She was part of a group of artists called the Newlyn School. Her paintings often showed nature and scenes from around her family home. She became very well-known during her lifetime. Her art was shown in major galleries in Ireland and England. Even important people like Queen Mary of Teck and Grand Duke of Hesse bought her paintings!

She became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1893. In 1896, her painting Morning Bath was shown there. It was the first time a painting by a female artist was bought by the Chantrey Bequest. This painting was then given to the Tate gallery. She also joined the Royal Watercolour Society in 1896 and became a full member in 1937.

In 1930, she was one of the first artists chosen for the Royal Ulster Academy. Mildred Anne stopped painting in the 1930s because of arthritis. She passed away in 1941 when she was 83 years old. Many of her artworks were sold in 1980. Today, she is even honored on a postage stamp by An Post.

Her Early Life

Mildred Anne Butler was born in 1858 in Kilmurry, a large old house near Thomastown. She was the youngest daughter of Captain Henry Butler. We know a lot about her life and how she painted from her beautiful watercolours and her diaries. She kept these diaries almost every year from 1892 to 1938.

Mildred Anne gave her paintings fun and unusual titles. Some examples are Ancient Rubbish, A Tit-Bit, and Chucked; Green Eyed Jealousy: Ravens amongst trees. These titles show her playful side! Her father, Henry Butler, also enjoyed painting. He loved to paint nature, especially exotic plants and animals he saw on his travels. Mildred Anne stayed at her family home in Kilmurry for most of her life. She often took trips to England and other countries in Europe. She kept painting until the 1930s, when arthritis made it too difficult. She died in 1941 at the age of 83.

Her Artistic Journey

Mildred Anne's father might have encouraged her to paint when she was young. But her real art training started in London in the late 1880s. She learned from a watercolour artist named Paul Jacob Naftel. She said he taught her everything about watercolours. Mildred Anne, like her friend Rose Barton, chose different subjects than Naftel. She loved to paint cows, birds, and flower gardens.

She continued her studies at the Westminster School of Art. There, she learned from William Frank Calderon, who was an expert in animal painting. He even opened his own school for animal painting. At Frank Calderon's school, she focused on painting cows. This work helped her get elected to the Royal Academy of Arts.

In her late twenties, Mildred Anne traveled to Europe every year until World War I started. She visited France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. In Paris, she studied drawing and fine art painting. While in Paris, she became connected with the Newlyn School. She spent the summers of 1894 and 1895 in Newlyn in Cornwall, England. Newlyn was a popular place for artists who liked to paint outdoors. Many of them had studied in France. She became close to the Newlyn School, especially Norman Garstin's studio. Other artists like Walter Osborne and Sir John Lavery were also there. Garstin, like Osborne, had learned from the famous artist Charles Verlat in Antwerp. Mildred Anne also became friends with Luke Fildes and Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn. The influence of Garstin and Forbes, and her time with the Newlyn School, really helped her art grow. This experience stayed important to her work throughout her life.

Mildred Anne kept showing her art throughout her career. She was also a smart businesswoman. She successfully sold her watercolours to important people. These included Queen Mary of Teck and Grand Duke of Hesse. She was a member of the Society of Women Artists. In 1930, she was one of the first nine artists chosen for the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts. She became a full member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1937. She had been an associate member since 1896.

Her Painting Style

Meditation (1889)

Mildred Anne Butler painted landscapes, everyday scenes, and animals using oil and watercolour. Her art mostly focused on nature. She often painted scenes from her home in Kilmurry. Her house was a huge source of ideas for her. The garden, pastures, and countryside around it inspired many of her paintings. These themes were always important to her. She also painted views of villages and towns she visited in Europe.

Butler painted en plein air, which means outdoors. This gave her work a fresh and lively feeling. She painted with a lot of realism and expression. Paintings like Meditation (1889) were seen as very new and exciting by art experts at the time. A writer for the magazine Hearth and Home said that her habit of painting outdoors, which was rare then, made her art feel very real and fresh.

Famous Works and Exhibitions

Some of Mildred Anne Butler's most well-known paintings include:

• A Sheltered Corner (1891)
• A High Court of Justice (1892)
• Green-Eyed Jealousy (1894)
• The Morning Bath (1896)
• Raiders from the Rookery (1896)
• Cead Mile Failte (1898)

Paintings that helped her get elected to the Royal Watercolour Society in 1896 include Dull December, Loiterers, and Beside the Pond. Sunshine Holiday (1898) was another important work.

Her paintings are now in many art collections. Morning Bath is at the Tate gallery in London. Other works are in the National Gallery of Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. A small watercolour of crows even hangs in Queen Mary's Dolls' House at Windsor Castle! Throughout her career, Butler's art was shown as far away as the United States and Japan.

She first showed her art at the Dudley Gallery in Piccadilly. She also exhibited in many other places. These included the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Watercolour Society of Ireland, the Belfast Ramblers' Sketching Club, the Royal Academy of Arts (from 1889 to 1902), and the Royal Watercolour Society.

In 1980, many of her watercolours, drawings, sketches, notes, letters, and diaries were sold. Some were sold in Ireland, and others at a sale in London. The National Gallery of Ireland bought seven beautiful watercolours for its collection. Fota House in Cork also has one of her works.

There have been several exhibitions of her work since her death. The Kilkenny Art Gallery Society held an exhibition at Kilkenny Castle in June 1981. It included paintings like Where the Grass Grows Green (1904). This exhibition was also shown in Dublin and London. In 1987, the Kilkenny Art Gallery held another exhibition called Mildred Anne Butler. It featured Cats Chasing Birds (1918). The Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork also had an exhibition in 1987. The Ulster Museum and Art Gallery in Belfast showed her work in 1988. As mentioned, she is honored on an Irish postage stamp as one of Ireland's important female artists.

Selected Works

• A Sheltered Corner (1891) R.A.
• A High Court of Justice (1892) R.A.
• Green-Eyed Jealousy (1894) R.A.
• The Morning Bath (1896) R.A., Tate, London.
• Beside the Pond (1896) R.W.S. Election 1896
• Dull December (1896) R.W.S. Election 1896
• Loiterers (1896) R.W.S. Election 1896
• Raiders from the Rookery (1896) R.A.
• Sunshine Holiday (1898) R.W.S.
• Cead Mile Failte (1898) R.A.
• Toll from the Turnip Cart (1896)
• The Wanderers (1898), Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.
• The Garden Cart
• Doves outside the Conservatory, Kilmurry
• Tramore Strand, Low water 1889
• Where the Grass Grows Green
• The Delegates (1923)
• Dandelions and Scillas
• The Garden Path (1922)
• Procession through the bluebells
• Madonna Lilies
• Side-cars
• Foxgloves
• Poppies (1904)
• The Lily Pond (1897)
• In the Conservatory, Kilmurry
• View in Pembroke Street, Dublin
• A garden path, probably Kilmurry
• A summer's day
• Hollyhocks
• Winter Survival
• Low water, Tramore, Waterford (1919)
• Station cabbies (1898)
• Poppies at Kilmurry: View across a wild Garden; and In flower
• Autumn by the Lake (1890)
• Figures beside a horse and chaise
• Horses grazing (1998)
• Cats Chasing Birds (1918)
• Peacocks
• The Spring Garden, Kilmurry
• Study of a Delphinium
• Sheep in a meadow
• The Grinding Wheel, Kilmurry
• Cattle grazing, Kilmurry
• Edge of the Woods
• Cattle in the shade, Kilmurray (1917)
• Lismore, Waterford
• Two cats, Kilmurry
• The Kilmurry Estate
• Meditation (1889)
• Cattle Resting in a Summer Meadow (1899)
• A Dead Magpie in a Tree
• A Trout Stream
• Procession through the Bluebells
• Crucifixion and hollyhocks
• Lilac Phlox
• The Farmyard
• An Post Postage stamp
• "Chucked; Green Eyed Jealousy": Ravens amongst trees
• Spring Garden (1916)
• The Sentinels: Rooks in the snow (1895)
• A Nap, Kilmurry, Co Kilkenny
• The Flowers of August (1900)
• Peacocks and Peahens on a Sunlit Lawn
• At Lismore, Co Waterford (1913)
• Fine Feathers
• Threashing in a riverside Field (1910)
• Peacocks at Kilmurry (1910)
• Doves at the Edge of a Garden
• A Cat stalking Pigeons
• Rose Peany
• Crows resting in a snow covered Landscape
• A Summer Border (1914)
• Young Jackdaws
• Aix les Bains
• A bluebell wood
• Kilmurry
• A French Chateau (1901)
• Cattle grazing
• Trees by a meadow

See also

• Newlyn School
• List of Irish artists
• List of Irish botanical illustrators