1856
Born in 1827 in Sussex, daughter of the Radical MP, Benjamin Leigh Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Leigh_Smith
the eldest of 5 children and cousin to Florence Nightingale. A settlement of £300 / annum at the age of 21 allowed her to take up her passions of art and social reform. She wrote journalism and verse and travelled and formed what was known as the Langham Plasce Group devoted to women's rights. She first exhibited in 1850. In 1857 she married the French doctor Eugene Bodichon and they visited the States and spent half of each year in Algeria and she painted a lot of North African landscapes. In her solo exhibition in London in 1861 she exhibited mainly watercolour landscapes. In 1877 she had a Stroke from which she never fully recovered but exhibited until at least 1881. She died at her home in Hastings in 1891.
2 comments:
Apparently the Pre-Raphaelite paintings of cliffs were controversial because they emphasised the geological age of the Earth at a time when Darwin's On the Origin of Species had only just been published.
Thank you. Quite right, very noticeable in John Brett's work.
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