DUBLIN.- The National Gallery of Ireland announced the opening of Mildred Anne Butler: At Home in Nature, a new display running from 14 September 2024 until 5 January 2025. This ‘in-focus’ display, part of the Gallery’s broader effort to re-contextualise and celebrate the contributions of Irish women artists, offers a unique opportunity to rediscover the work of Mildred Anne Butler (1858–1941), one of Ireland’s first professional women artists. It showcases 16 watercolours, drawn from public and private collections across the island of Ireland, along with a selection of archival material, on loan from Trinity College Dublin, which provide further insights into her life as a working artist.
Mildred Anne Butler was born and raised at Kilmurry, a grand mid-18th-century manor house near Thomastown, County Kilkenny. The 350-acre estate provided her with an endless source of inspiration, and a wealth of exquisite colour to paint. Her work captures the essence of her immediate environs with both striking accuracy and a sense of fresh immediacy.
Butler is best known for her sumptuous garden scenes, as well as her detailed depictions of animals and birds, which she cleverly imbued with subtleties of character. She made sketches out doors and kept a collection of stuffed birds that she drew from, serving as a valuable aid to her work. Mildred Anne Butler: At Home in Nature features some of the artist’s finest works, including A Preliminary Investigation (1898), Shades of Evening (1904), and The Lilac Phlox, Kilmurry, County Kilkenny (1912). Her passion for wildlife is beautifully represented in her large-scale rook paintings, including The High Court of Justice (Exhibited RA, 1892), The Valiant Three (1893), and Green-Eyed Jealousy (1894). Additionally, watercolours like A Sheltered Corner (1891), Forty Winks (1899), and Under the Hawthorn Tree (1905), highlight her ability to depict cattle, another one of her favourite subjects.
The display, curated by Niamh MacNally, celebrates Butler’s significant contribution to Irish art and her pioneering role as a women artist. It features works from the Gallery’s own collection alongside key loans from public and private collections including the Ulster Museum, the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts in Belfast, and the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny.
Dr Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, said: "Mildred Anne Butler’s work exemplifies her extraordinary technical skill as a watercolourist, and her pioneering spirit as one of Ireland’s first professional female artists. This exhibition honours Butler’s exceptional talent, and her remarkable ability to capture the essence of her surroundings."
Niamh MacNally, Curator of the Prints & Drawings Study Room at the Gallery, notes: "This display reaffirms Mildred Anne Butler’s position as an important figure in the history of Irish Art. Her great talent and artistic vision is celebrated through the various anthropomorphic pictures on show, whose witty titles reflect her playful sensibility. The works not only reveal her virtuoso handling of the watercolour medium, but highlight how she seamlessly translated onto paper all the delicate nuances of sunlight and shadow that she experienced at first hand in nature."
