MILDRED ANNE BUTLER | The Boot Boy

Dillon Antiques, Dublin, 1984

Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, A Century of Irish Painting: Selections from the Brian P. Burns Collection, 3 March - 29 April 2007, illustrated p.60

The board appears to be sound, slightly bowed; otherwise the work appears in good overall condition. UV light reveals a few small spots of retouching in the background to the right of the boy and three minor spots near the boy's feet. Held in a gilt moulded frame, ready to hang.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Although Mildred Anne Butler painted almost exclusively in watercolour, this oil painting shows her to have been equally talented in this more intractable medium. Painted around 1880, The Boot Boy depicts a young lad assiduously engaged in polishing a boot. Beside him, on a three legged-stool, a scallop shell contains black polish, while around the floor are scattered several items of footwear. Above the wainscot, on the plain panelled wall, hangs a jacket. In Irish country houses in the nineteenth century, in kitchen and scullery areas, the walls and woodwork were painted a brown colour, obtained by mixing together the remains of pots of different paints, that had been used to decorate the main rooms. The boy is himself wearing boots, and a shirt and waistcoat; he has started life as part of the domestic staff of a country house. Butler’s painting is a sympathetic portrait, evoking a scene of everyday life in an Irish country house during the Edwardian era.  

Born at Kilmurray, Thomastown, co. Kilkenny, Mildred Anne Butler was the youngest daughter of Captain Henry Butler, who was himself an amateur artist and a grandson of the 11th Viscount Mountgarret. Although discriminated against because she was a woman, Butler set out to become an artist. She studied in London, firstly under Paul Naftel, then with William Frank Calderon, who specialised in animal painting. In the summers of 1894 and the following year, she spent time in Newlyn, where she studied under Norman Garstin. She then returned to Kilmurry, where she lived and worked until her death. Butler first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in Piccadilly in 1888, and also showed with the Royal Watercolour Society, the RHA and the Watercolour Society of Ireland. She became a member of the Royal Academy in 1893 and three years later her painting The Morning Bath was exhibited at the Academy, where it was purchased by the Chantry Bequest—their first acquisition of a work by a female artist—who presented it to the Tate. After her death, Butler was virtually forgotten, until 1980, when an exhibition curated by Prof. Anne Crookshank brought her to public notice again; thereafter her work gained enormously in popularity. A touring exhibition of her work was organised by the Crawford Art Gallery in 1987; it travelled to the National Gallery and to the Ulster Museum.

Peter Murray