Mary Forster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emma Judith Mary Forster
Born(1853-12-06)6 December 1853
Died2 May 1885(1885-05-02) (aged 31)
NationalityBritish
Known forPainting
Spouse
Samuel Hill Smith Lofthouse
(m. 1884)
A Valley Scene by Mary Forster

(Emma Judith) Mary Forster (1853–1885) was a British water-colour painter.

Life[edit]

Forster was born on 6 December 1853. She was the daughter of Thomas Barton Watkin Forster and Emma Stewart (born Galbraith), a landscape-painter, of Holt Manor, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. Her father was an amateur painter who had exhibited since 1859[1] and he and his daughter would go on sketching trips to locations that included France and Wales. Forster exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1876, 1878 and 1880.[2]

In 1884 she became an associate of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. On 3 June 1884 she married Samuel Hill Smith Lofthouse who was a barrister who went on to be an honorary secretary to the Bar Committee and an assistant recorder.[3] She only briefly exhibited under her married name as she died on 2 May 1885 in Lower Halliford on the Thames during childbirth. Her brief career was marked by an exhibition of 26 of her works later that summer[1] and a brief obituary in the Dictionary of National Biography.[4]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Obituary, History of the Old Water Colour Society
  2. ^ Huon Mallalieu, ‘Forster , (Emma Judith) Mary (1853–1885)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 31 Jan 2015
  3. ^ Samuel Hill Smith, Men at the Bar, Wikisource
  4. ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Lofthouse, Mary" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 34. London: Smith, Elder & Co.