An Unknown Lady
Mary Lemon Waller (Bideford 1851 - 1931)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1881 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on board
Measurements
195 x 160 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Cragside, Northumberland
NT 1230214
Summary
Oil painting on board, An Unknown Lady by Mary Lemon Waller (Bideford 1851 - 1931), signed and dated 1881. An oval, head-and-shoulders portrait of a lady, in profile to the left, with fair hair and blue eyes, wearing a red dress with lace collar and a floral brooch. Mary Lemon Waller was a portrait and genre painter who studied at the Royal Academy where she exhibited from 1877 to 1904. She was the daughter of the Reverend Hugh Fowler of Bumwood, Gloucestershire and married the genre and animal painter Samuel Edmund Waller (1850 – 1903). She and her husband were recorded living in St John’s Wood, London in 1881. She was also a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London in 1925 and exhibited sixty works there as well as the Society of Women Artists, London, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, London, Dudley Gallery and New Gallery, London, Grosvenor Gallery, London, the Manchester City Art Gallery and at the Royal Scottish Academy.
Provenance
Armstrong collection; transferred by the Treasury to The National Trust in 1977 via the National Land Fund, aided by 3rd Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside (1919 - 1987).
Credit line
Cragside, The Armstrong Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to the National Trust in 1977)
Marks and inscriptions
Bottom left: M. L. W. Sept. 1881
Makers and roles
Mary Lemon Waller (Bideford 1851 - 1931), artist