AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY
ELIZABETH BUTLER
With Illustrations from Sketches byTHE AUTHOR.
CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.
LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY1922
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD.,
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
To
MY CHILDREN
FOREWORD
THE memoirs of a great artist must inevitably evoke the interest andappreciation of the initiated. But this book makes a wider appeal,written as it is by a woman whose career, apart from her art, has beenvaried and adventurous, who has travelled widely and associated, notonly with the masters of her own craft, but with the great and eminentin many fields. It is, moreover, the revelation of a personality apart,at once feminine and virile, endued with the force engendered byunswerving adherence to lofty aims.
In this age of insistent ugliness, when the term “realism” is used tocloak every form of grossness and degeneracy, it is a privilege tocommune with one who speaks of her “experiences of the world’sloveliness” and describes herself as “full of interest in mankind.”These two phrases, taken at random from the opening pages of “FromSketch Book and Diary,” seem to me eminently characteristic of LadyButler and her work. She is a worshipper of Beauty in its spiritual aswell as its concrete form, and all her life she has envisaged mankind inits nobler aspect.
At seven years old little Elizabeth Thompson was already drawingminiature battles, at seventeen she was lamenting that as yet she hadachieved nothing great, and a very few years later the world was ringingwith the fame of the painter of “The Roll Call.”
Through the accumulated interests of changeful years, charged for herwith intense joy and sorrow, she has kept her valiant standard flying,in her art as in her life remaining faithful to her belief in humanity,using her power and insight for its uplifting. Not only has she depictedfor us great events and strenuous action, with a sureness all her own,she has caught and materialised the qualities which inspire heroicdeeds—courage, endurance, fidelity to a life’s ideal even in the momentof death. And all without shirking the dreadful details of thebattlefield; amid blood and grime and misery, in loneliness and neglect,in the desperate steadfastness of a lost cause, her figures stand outtrue to themselves and to the highest traditions of their country.
During the recent world-upheaval Lady Butler devoted herself incharacteristic fashion to the pursuance of her aims. Many of thesubjects painted and exhibited during those terrible years stillpreached her gospel. She worked, moreover, with a twofold motive. Widowof a great soldier, she devoted the proceeds of her labours to her lessfortunate sisters left impoverished, and even destitute, by the War.
“