An Autobiography

This is the memoir of Elizabeth Thompson (later Lady Butler), one of the most celebrated painters of the Victorian age, a woman who dared to paint war when women were supposed to paint flowers. Her battle scenes captured the raw humanity of conflict with such visceral power that they made her famous across Europe, even as the Royal Academy initially dismissed her. Here she tells her own story: the Swiss childhood beside Lake Leman where her father's unconventional education sparked her artistic fire, the years of study in Italy that forged her distinctive eye, and her gradual ascent into a world that didn't expect women to depict soldiers dying in the mud. She writes of traveling through war zones, of the famous figures who became her friends and subjects, and of the particular freedom that came from refusing to be confined to "feminine" subjects. This autobiography captures a pivotal moment when one woman proved that talent has no gender, and wrote her own version of a remarkable life.