Even her contemporaries appreciated the Anglo-Irish artist, Rose Barton, as the equal of Herbert Menzies Marshall in her work as an urban topographer. Rose Barton was born in Dublin on 21 April 1856, into a wealthy Anglo-Irish family. Her father was a solicitor in Rochetown, County Tipperary. She was educated privately and studied art first in Brussels (1874), and then alongside her friend Mildred Anne Butler in Paris (under Henri Gervex) and London (under Paul Naftel). She returned to work in Dublin, and began to exhibit widely, both in Ireland (from 1878) and in mainland Britain. Her first important show was that at the Japanese Gallery, in London in 1893, which she shared with George Haité.
Five years later, she had a solo show at the Clifford Gallery. Before her permanent move to London in 1903, when she settled in Knightsbridge, she had already been elected an associate of both the Society of Women Artists (1886) and the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (1893; full member 1911). She was also a committee member of the Irish Watercolour Society. She had also proved that her watercolours could be adapted to publication, for she had illustrated Picturesque Dublin Old and New (1898). Her work for the publisher A & C Black comprised Familiar London (1904), The Ramparts of Empire (illustrated with Norman Wilkinson in 1910) and contributions to London (1915). She died at her Knightsbridge home on 10 October 1929.
Further reading: Rose Barton RWS (1856-1929), London: Christie’s, 1987
