Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 29th April 2019

40 34 Mildred Anne Butler RWS (1858-1941) Springtime (1896-98) signed ‘Mildred A. Butler’ lower left watercolour with touches of white heightening 73.5 x 53cm (29 x 21in) Provenance: From the Estate of the artist’s niece, Mrs Doreen Archer-Houblon, Kilmurry House, Co Kilkenny; Christie’s, London, Watercolours by Mildred Anne Butler, 13th October 1981, Lot 13, where purchased by the present owner Exhibited: Old Water-Colour Society, Winter 1898, No.180; Dublin and Kilkenny, Mildred Anne Butler, 1981, no.27 €10,000-€15,000 ($11,235-$16,853) (£8,474-£12,711) In this large watercolour by Mildred Anne Butler—one of her finest works—three girls pick flowers in a meadow by a river. In the background is a stand of trees. Although Butler’s paintings are timeless, there is an essential Edwardian quality to her art; a sense of peaceful summer pastures, peacocks on lawns, and evening mists in winter woodlands. Spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, her watercolours embody classic elements of Victorian culture, such as an interest in gardens, trees and animals—the latter frequently assigned anthropomorphic roles—but transcend the conventionality and sentimentality of much Victorian art. In later years she produced sensitive depictions of cattle grazing, walled gardens and herbaceous borders, often in the setting of Kilmurry, near Thomastown in County Kilkenny, the house where she was born in 1858, and died in 1941. Grandson of the 11 th Viscount Mountgarret, Butler’s father, Captain Henry Butler, was also an artist. He wrote and illustrated a book on big-game hunting, South African Sketches, published in 1841. Her mother, Ciara Butler (née Taylor), had come to Ireland from Leicester. The youngest in the family, Mildred Anne had two siblings, Walter and Isabel. She studied art first under Frederick Brown, at the Westminster School of Art. Then, in 1885, she and a relative, Lady French, toured France, Switzer- land and Italy. Her work from this period reveals the influence of another tutor, Paul Naftel, who ran a school in London, and gave correspondence courses. Butler was a dedicated student, studying the technique of watercolour painting with Naftel, the depiction of animals with William Frank Calderon, and absorbing a French Realist aesthetic from Henri Gervex in Paris. In 1894, along with May Guin- ness, she travelled to Newlyn in Cornwall, where Norman Garstin was teaching a style of Northern European Impressionism. First exhibiting in 1888 with the Dudley Gallery, Butler enjoyed both com- mercial success and popularity. She showed regularly with the Watercolour Society of Ireland, and the Royal Academy. In 1891 her painting Morning was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest, and that same year Out in the Open attracted favourable comment from Queen Victoria. Two years later she was asked to contribute to a portfolio, to be presented to Princess May. She also contributed to a presenta- tion to King Edward VII, and in 1910 Queen Alexandra purchased one of her paintings. Peter Murray, March 2019