Long before PTSD was an acknowledged and researched condition, Lady Elizabeth Butler, as a war painter, had been documenting the agony, tyranny, shock and horrors of war through her paintbrush. A consummate artist, she left behind a treasure trove of art and manuscripts, most of which now finds place in this book by Catherine Wynne. Read on…
A ‘recovery’ project drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, this is the first biography of Victorian Britain’s famous war artist, Elizabeth Thompson Butler. She transformed war art by depicting conflict trauma, decades before its designation as a medical condition. Married to an officer in the British army, she traveled with her husband’s military postings. Her art is prescient in its concern about the implications of foreign military intervention and champions the ordinary soldier and the dispossessed. Lady Butler is a story of travel and history, of war and conflict, of Italy of the Risorgimento, of the London art world where she achieved celebrity and negotiated the difficulties of being a female artist in a male-dominated domain, and of imperial travel. Her biography reveals a figure whose perspective on war is modern, whose confidence in achieving success in the masculine field of battle art taps into contemporary debates, and whose work provokes a rethinking of the post-imperial world.
From the book description
Readers who like to learn more about the colonial world, especially imperial Britain, will like this collection of visuals of their foreign policy, which was war, to be a thrilling, and some times soul-stirring journey. Not for the faint-hearted! Widely available at most large book stores.
