Niamh MacNally, Curator of the Prints & Drawing Study Room at the National Gallery of Ireland, previews the new exhibition on Irish artist Mildred Anne Butler …
Mildred Anne Butler, The Lilac Phlox, Kilmurry, County Kilkenny, 1912
Credit: Photo, National Gallery of Ireland
Can you tell us about Mildred Anne Butler’s background?
Like many talented women artists of her generation, Mildred Anne Butler came from a privileged background. She was born in Kilmurry House, Thomastown, Co Kilkenny in 1858. The mid-18th century manor house was her lifelong home, while the family’s 350-acre estate provided her with infinite inspiration and a wealth of exquisite colour to paint. Butler delighted in documenting rural life through the seasons, and all the activities of domestic and farm life. A prolific artist, she is best known for her lush garden scenes, and her detailed depictions of animals and birds, which she cleverly imbued with subtleties of character. Butler received instruction from Paul Naftel, the English watercolour painter and teacher, who encouraged her to work outdoors and recommended that she use nature as her guide. The summers she spent in Newlyn, Cornwall, where the Irish artist Norman Garstin introduced her to contemporary French painting, were also important for her artistic development. Throughout her life, she endlessly recorded nature in richly-coloured watercolours that highlight her remarkable skills of observation. In 1885, Butler travelled to France and Italy on a Grand Tour of Europe, and from 1888 made annual trips to view the exhibitions in London, however from 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, she ceased travelling abroad. In 1930, aged 72, she had to stop painting due to severe arthritis, and died at her home in Kilmurry, aged 83, in 1941.
Mildred Anne Butler, A Tit-Bit
Credit: Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.
What is her significance to Irish art?
Mildred Anne Butler’s work exemplifies her exceptional talent as a watercolourist and her pioneering spirit as one of Ireland’s first professional women artists. Her privileged background meant that she did not need to earn a living, however, as a highly accomplished, professional artist, she was very capable of doing so from her paintings. She consistently prepared works for exhibition, and sold her works well, holding her own at a time when male artists dominated the profession. She regularly exhibited with the Water Colour Society of Ireland, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Society of Lady Artists, the Royal Academy, the Royal Watercolour Society, the Dudley Gallery and the New Gallery in London, and the Ulster Academy of Arts in Belfast. During her lifetime, Butler received critical acclaim, and thus established a good reputation across Britain and Ireland. After her death, her work fell into obscurity for some time, however, a renewed interest in her art followed the sale of the contents of her studio in 1981. Homan Potterton, the Gallery’s former director, purchased seven watercolours for the collection from this sale of some 400 watercolours, drawings, and sketches. He described the discovery of these watercolours as “the phenomenon of the century.” Through a selection of her finest watercolours, the exhibition “Mildred Anne Butler: At Home in Nature” aims to honour and reaffirm the artist’s enduring influence on Irish art. Her extraordinary talent and artistic vision is celebrated through a range of anthropomorphic pictures, whose witty titles not only reflect her playful sensibility but convey meaning to her work. The works on show reveal her virtuoso handling of the watercolour medium, and highlight how she could effortlessly translate onto paper all that she experienced at first hand in nature.
Mildred Anne Butler, A Preliminary Investigation, 1898
Credit: Photo, National Gallery of Ireland
What are some of the highlights of the exhibition and what will visitors enjoy to see?
“Mildred Anne Butler: At Home in Nature” features 16 watercolours, drawn from the Gallery’s own collection and key loans from public and private collections across the island of Ireland, including the Ulster Museum and the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. Some outstanding examples from the Gallery’s collection include A Preliminary Investigation (1898), Shades of Evening (1904), and The Lilac Phlox, Kilmurry, County Kilkenny (1912), which shows the artist’s abundant walled garden at Kilmurry. Her passion for wildlife, and rooks in particular, is represented in large-scale exhibition pictures like The High Court of Justice (RA, 1892), The Valiant Three (RA, 1893), and Green-Eyed Jealousy (RA, 1894), all of which show birds displaying human characteristics or traits. In addition, watercolours like A Sheltered Corner (1891), Forty Winks (1899), and Under the Hawthorn Tree (1905), point to her ability to accurately depict cattle and trees, whether bare or in full bloom. One of her more exotic subjects were peacocks, birds that freely roamed the gardens at Kilmurry.
Mildred Anne Butler, Down in the Dust, 1930
Credit: Reproduced with kind permission of The Royal Ulster Academy of Arts, Belfast. Photographer Simon McWilliams.
Her peacock pictures were in high demand among collectors of her work. Down in the Dust (exhibited 1930) is one such large-scale watercolour, showing a peacock fanning its extravagant tail feathers to attract a peahen. Visitors will marvel at Butler’s tremendous ability to capture her immediate surroundings, while learning more about her life as a professional artist, through a selection of archival material that is on loan from Trinity College Dublin. Butler not only made sketches outdoors but kept a collection of stuffed birds that she drew from, serving as a valuable aid to her work. A couple of rook specimens, on loan from the Natural History Museum’s collection, will be included in the display. These taxidermy specimens, typical of the types of birds that Butler drew from, highlight her expertise in accurately portraying birds.
Mildred Anne Butler, Shades of Evening, 1904
Credit: Photo, National Gallery of Ireland
Need to Know: “Mildred Anne Butler: At Home in Nature” is on at the National Gallery of Ireland from September 14 to until January 5 2025. Admission is free. To find out more visit, www.nationalgallery.ie.
