Henrietta Ward

Henrietta Mary Ada Ward ( born June 11, 1832 in London, † July 12, 1924 in Slough ) was an English painter.

Life and work

Henrietta Ward was born in 1832 in a renowned family of artists. Her grandfather was the animal painter James Ward, and also their parents worked artistically. Since childhood surrounded by artists, she began self- painting at the Bloomsbury Art School and at the Drawing School founded by Henry Sass study.

1848, at the age of 16, she ran away from home and married the 16 years old history painter Edward Matthew Ward. The couple had eight children over the years, including Leslie Ward, who was known as a caricaturist and painter under the pseudonym Spy. In these years, Henrietta Ward also began their own very successful career as a painter of genre pieces that figured their children. However, the most attention she attracted by its history paintings, which she exhibited at the Royal Academy, such as Queen Mary Quitting Stirling Castle ( 1863), Palissey the Potter (1866 ) and The Childhood of Joan of Arc (1867 ). She also worked for the possibility for women to study at the Royal Academy, and they supported the suffragette movement.

When her husband died in 1879, Henrietta Ward founded his own art school, which was targeted at women. Among the tutors were so prominent family friends like Lawrence Alma -Tadema, William Frith and John Everett Millais.

Henrietta Ward also wrote two autobiographies, Mrs. EM Ward's Reminiscences Memories of Ninety Years 1911 and 1924, in the year she died.