Collection: Mildred Anne Butler

Read the full story: her life at Kilmurry, and a collector's guide. Explore the Mildred Anne Butler guide →

Light, birds, and the quiet rhythms of one Kilkenny garden — painted with a master's touch.

Mildred Anne Butler (1858–1941) is one of Ireland's finest watercolourists. She trained under Paul Jacob Naftel and in Paris under Henri Gervex, spent the summers of 1894 and 1895 at Newlyn in Norman Garstin's classes, and then painted, for roughly fifty years, the doves, cattle, rooks, rooftops and flowerbeds of Kilmurry, the Co. Kilkenny house where she was born and died. In 1896 the trustees of the Chantrey Bequest bought her Morning Bath for the nation; it is at Tate.

Browse the full collection of Mildred Anne Butler art prints on archival 250gsm matte paper, framed or unframed, with free worldwide shipping.

Read the story: she was nearly lost — until four hundred works came out of her studio at Christie's in 1981. Mildred Anne Butler: the garden at Kilmurry →

Hanging them as a set

Butler was born at Kilmurry, near Thomastown in County Kilkenny, in 1858, and died there in 1941. The house and its garden were her subject for most of a working life — the rooks, the doves, the trees, the yard, the light going. She learned watercolour from Paul Jacob Naftel in London and spent two summers at Newlyn with Norman Garstin, and kept coming back to the same acre of ground. The garden watercolours were rarely exhibited while she lived; most became public only after the contents of Kilmurry were sold in the 1970s. Hung together they are what they always were — one garden, painted over and over.

Part of our full Irish Art Prints collection — over 600 works by Ireland's greatest artists.