Elizabeth Southendon Thompson was born on 3 November 1846 at Lausanne, Switzerland to Thomas James Thompson and his second wife Christiana Weller.  Both of Elizabeth’s parents enjoyed the arts and, as such, encouraged Elizabeth and her younger sister Alice to do likewise, so it was no surprise that Elizabeth pursued a painting career and Alice, a year younger than Elizabeth, took a slightly different artistic route and became an essayist and poet.

In 1866, Elizabeth had the opportunity of going on to study at the Female School of Art, part of the Royal College of Art in London and for a few years she primarily painted portraits and landscapes but in 1870 she went to Paris and became influenced by the military artists at that time.  The Franco-Prussian war was in full swing and consequently French artists were portraying scenes of patriotism and the glories of war but Elizabeth decided to look at life from the less glamorous angle and, in particular the common soldier on the battlefield.  Although she didn’t go out ‘into the field’ she ensured her paintings were accurate by seeking out soldiers who could give her first hand information about the battles and she made a detailed study of the uniforms and weapons used.

In 1873 she painted Missing, a Franco-Prussian battle scene and with this picture she earned her first submission to The Royal Academy in London.  Spurred on by this, in 1874 she submitted Roll Call to the Royal Academy and the Selection Committee was so impressed they included it in their annual exhibition.  The painting was incredibly popular and queues of people waited to view.  In fact it was so popular that it was taken on a tour around Britain.  Eventually the painting was put up for sale and gained a huge amount of interest which led to a number of bidders vying for ownership including HRH Queen Victoria, and, typical of the Brits at that time, everyone backed out of the bidding and so the painting went to her Royal Highness. However, Queen Victoria agreed that an engraving could be made which enabled the ordinary man in the street to obtain a print to hang on the sitting room wall.  Within a matter of months Elizabeth became one of the country’s most popular artists, not least because it was incredibly unusual to find a woman turning out accurate and dramatic military paintings in such fine detail.

(Pictured above, 1877 – The Return from Inkerman)

On 11 June 1877, during Elizabeth’s most successful period of painting, she married Major William Butler, a distinguished army officer, born into a poor Roman Catholic family from Tipperary, Ireland and the couple naturally moved to Ireland.  William held strong views on the way Roman Catholics had been treated by the British government and this had an effect on Elizabeth as she too was from a Roman Catholic family.  On one occasion, having heard of a local Roman Catholic woman about to be evicted from her home, she hurried to the scene to try to help but found the woman had already been evicted and was sifting through a pile of rubble to gather together her meagre belongings – the landlord had destroyed her former home just to make sure she didn’t return.  Elizabeth set to with her canvas and easel and painted a sorry scene entitled Evicted in the hope that it would ram home the point that Roman Catholics were flesh and blood and, just because they followed a different religion it didn’t follow that they were aliens from the Planet Zog.  However, due to the brittle political situation between the Roman Catholics and the mainly Protestant British this was extremely unpopular with much of the populace when it was placed into an exhibition.  This disfavour practically reached rock bottom around 1880-1881 when the First Boer War began.  Once again, it was considered that more rousing military paintings were needed not only to raise the morale of the people but to show a more heroic side to war in order to encourage more cannon fodder to enrol into the army.

Once Elizabeth had married and had fallen slightly by the wayside as far as her British fans were concerned, she continued her military paintings, drawing some inspiration from travelling as the wife of an army officer.  She also found time to do some black and white illustrations to accompany her sister’s poetry and raise six children.

Upon William’s retirement from the army, they returned to Bansha Castle in Ireland where Elizabeth showed several pictures at the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1892 onwards but she never regained the popularity of her earlier years.

In 1910 William died but Elizabeth continued to live at Bansha until 1922 when, at the age of 76 she moved into Gormaston Castle to live with her youngest daughter, Eileen, Viscountess Gormaston where she remained until she died in 1933, shortly before her 87th birthday.  She’s buried in nearby Stamullen graveyard.