BUTLER, Herbert Edward

1861 - 1931

Herbert Edward Butler was born at 4 Carlton Villas, Camden Road, Islington, London in 1861, son of Isaac Butler, a tar distiller & lamp black manufacturer, and his wife Sarah née Ayton, who married at Hackney, London in 1856, Herbert was a nephew of Elizabeth Field Butler. Herbert studied at the Royal Academy Schools and in 1881, a 20-year-old art student, living at 235 Camden Road, Islington with his parents, 51-year-old Isaac and 50-year-old Sarah, and his five siblings, William Bowton 24, Alfred Morris 18, Eleanor 14, Catherine Maud 9 and Florence Mabel 7, and the family kept three indoor servants. A landscape & figure painter and an illustrator, and a member and exhibitor at the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1883 when he exhibited from 235 Camden Road, London four oil paintings, ‘Who’s Afraid?’, ‘The Old Barn’, ‘A June Cornfield’ and ‘Farm Buildings’ and continued to exhibit annually until 1890, he also exhibited at the 1889 Woodbridge Art Exhibition several oil paintings. He then went to live in Cornwall where, in 1892 he married at Liskeard, Sophia Rowett Pond (24 June 1872-29 September 1939) and in 1893 went to Chicago, USA where their eldest daughter, Alice was born in 1894. He returned to England and was living at Watford where daughter Mary and son John Field were born. By March 1901, a 40-year-old artist (painter), living at The Orchard, Talland Hill, Talland, Polperro, Cornwall with his 28-year-old wife Sophia, born Polperro and three of their six children Alice 7, Mary 5 and John Field 3. At Polperro, besides painting, he also ran a painting school and in 1911, was still living at The Orchard with his wife and daughter Mary, with an addition of 6-year-old Catherine Sarah. On 24 October 1913, Butler sailed from London on the 'Mantua' for Bombay, India where he painted some watercolours. Butler enjoyed a national reputation with fourteen of his pictures being exhibited at the Royal Academy 1887-1915 including large oil paintings, so fashionable with the Victorians, but after the First World War he turned to smaller watercolours, he was also a book illustrator. His oil painting 'Politics' was exhibited at the centenary exhibition of the Ipswich Art Club in 1974 and he also exhibited at the International Society of Sculptors Painters; Walker Art Gallery; Manchester City Art Gallery; Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Herbert Edward Butler was of Hillside, Polperro, Cornwall when he died at Woodside Nursing Home, Plymouth, Devon on 30 August 1931, aged 70 and his wife died at 34 Thornhill Road, Plymouth in 1939, aged 67.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from 235 Camden Road, North London
1887 309 Hard Times
         958 Hauling the Pilchard Nets
1888 460 'Fresh from the silver sea'
from The Orchard, Polperro, Cornwall
1903 308 Youth and Age
1905 760 Rating a Stowaway: the Skipper's Decision
1907 119 Dallying
         240 Out into the Deep
1909 675 'Neath the Moonlit Eaves
1912 408 The Valley of the Shadow
1913 500 In a Cornish Bakehouse: Chafing a Bachelor
         867 The Watch House, Polperro: Moonlight
1914 92 The Wanderer: Moonlight
1915 472 Moonlight and Mystery

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Works by This Artist