Barbara Bodichon - Sisters Working in our Fields

c. 1858 - 60
Watercolour and bodycolour on paper
painted in Algeria from "the villa on the green heights of Mustapha Superieur" which the Bodichons bought on their marriage in 1858.

Barbara Bodichon - Dreams of Escape : Ireland 1846

Watercolour and bodycolour, with varnish, on paper

Whitworth Art Gallery

never exhibited and an early work of hers. Probably 'inspired' by the Irish famine of that year and following a visit to Ireland by her and her family the year before.

Barbara Bodichon - At Ventnor, Isle of Wight

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.