Rose Maynard Barton
Irish Watercolourist, Genre-Painter, Townscape Artist. Biography, Paintings.

Rose Maynard Barton RWS (1856-1929)

The Irish townscape painter Rose Barton was born in County Tipperary, in 1856. She was the cousin of the writer and artist Edith Somerville. Educated privately, she began exhibiting her watercolour painting with the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) in 1872. In 1875, Rose Barton Rose and her sister Emily visited Brussels where they had lessons in drawing and fine art painting. Evidently her artistry blossomed, as three years later she exhibited her picture "Dead Game", at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) - the first of several paintings she showed there over the years. In 1879, she joined the local committee of the Irish Fine Art Society and within 3-4 years she determined to take up painting full time. This led her, in company with her close friend Mildred Anne Butler, to study figure painting and figure drawing under the French artist, Henri Gervex, and afterwards at Paul Jacob Naftel's art studio in London.

More exhibitions of her paintings followed. In 1884, she exhibited at the Royal Academy (RA). Later, she showed at the Japanese Gallery, the Dudley Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. In 1893, she became an associate member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, attaining full membership in 1911. By her mid-50s, Rose Barton's watercolours and townscapes were becoming well-known in both Dublin and London, not least because of her illustrations in books of both cities.

According to the art historian Anne Crookshank, Rose Barton had a natural skill for reproducing the clammy atmosphere of London in the fog, with the glimmer of its street lamps and shiny wet streets. A liberal in social affairs, with a keen interest in horseracing and betting, Barton exhibited with a number of different painting societies, most notably the WCSI, the RHA and the Society of Women Artists. Her paintings are represented in public collections of Irish painting in both Ireland and Britain.

Most Expensive Painting By Rose Maynard Barton

The auction record for a work by Rose Barton was set in 2002, when her painting, entitled Sunbeams, was sold at Christie's, in London, for £29,875.

More Information About Visual Arts in Ireland

• For details of other townscape painters, see: Irish Artists: Paintings and Biographies.
• For more about urban landscape artists like Rose Maynard Barton, see: Irish Art Guide.
• For more about townscape and genre painting, see: Homepage.