Butler, Mildred A. Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colors and of the Society of Lady Artists. Pupil of Naftel, Calderon, and Garstin. Has exhibited at the Royal Academy and New Gallery. Her picture called the "Morning Bath," exhibited at the Academy in 1896, was purchased under the Chantry Bequest and is in the Tate Gallery. It is a water-color, valued at £50.
Miss Butler exhibited "A Corner of the Bargello, Florence," at the London Academy in 1903.
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Butler, Lady Elizabeth. Born in Lausanne about 1844. Elizabeth Southerden Thompson. As a child this artist was fond of drawing soldiers and horses. She studied at the South Kensington School, at Florence under Bellucci, and in Rome. She worked as an amateur some years, first exhibiting at the Academy in 1873 her picture called "Missing," which was praised; but the "Roll-Call," of the following year, placed her in the front rank of the Academy exhibitors. It was purchased by the Queen and hung in Windsor Castle. She next exhibited the "Twenty-Eighth Regiment at Quatre Bras," the "Return from Inkerman," purchased by the Fine Art Society for £3,000. This was followed by kindred subjects.
In 1890 Lady Butler exhibited "Evicted," in 1891 the "Camel Corps," in 1892 "Halt in a Forced March," in 1895 the "Dawn of Waterloo," in 1896 "Steady the Drums and Fifes," in 1902 "Tent Pegging in India," in 1903 "Within Sound of the Guns."
In 1869 she painted a religious picture called the "Magnificat." In water-colors she has painted "Sketches in Tuscany" and several pictures of soldiers, among which are "Scot's Grays Advancing" and "Cavalry at a Gallop."
Lady Butler has recently appeared as an author, publishing "Letters from the Holy Land," illustrated by sixteen most attractive drawings in colors. The Spectator says: "Lady Butler's letters and diary, the outcome of a few weeks' journeyings in Palestine, express simply and forcibly the impressions made on a devout and cultivated mind by the scenes of the Holy Land."
In 1875 Ruskin wrote in "Notes of the Academy": "I never approached a picture with more iniquitous prejudice against it than I did Miss Thompson's—'Quatre Bras'—partly because I have always said that no woman could paint, and secondly because I thought what the public made such a fuss about must be good for nothing. But it is Amazon's work this, no doubt of it, and the first fine pre-Raphaelite picture of battle we have had; profoundly interesting, and showing all manner of illustrative and realistic faculty.... The sky is most tenderly painted, and with the truest outline of cloud of all in the Exhibition; and the terrific piece of gallant wrath and ruin on the extreme left, when the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his horse as he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse, seen through the smoke below, is wrought through all the truth of its frantic passion with gradations of color and shade which I have not seen the like of since Turner's death."
The Art Journal, 1877, says: "'Inkerman' is simply a marvellous production when considered as the work of a young woman who was never on the field of battle.... No matter how many figures she brings into the scene, or how few, you may notice character in each figure, each is a superb study."
Her recent picture, "Within Sound of the Guns," shows a company of mounted soldiers on the confines of a river in South Africa.