| George Edmund Butler | |
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George Edmund Butler at work |
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| Born | January 15, 1872 Southampton, England |
| Died | August 9, 1936 (aged 64) Twickenham, England |
| Field | Painting |
George Edmund Butler (January 15, 1872–August 9, 1936) was a landscape and portrait painter specializing in oils and watercolours.
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Born 15 January 1872 in Southampton, England, George Edmund Butler emigrated to Wellington, New Zealand with his parents, Joseph Cawte Butler and Jane Tiller, in 1883.[1] After completing his education at Te Aro School, Butler worked for his father and studied art part-time under James Nairn at the Wellington School of Design.[2]
Butler enrolled at the Wellington School of Design in 1890. In 1892 he joined the avant-garde Wellington Art Club, founded by Nairn, and soon established a local reputation for his paintings of seascapes.[2] In 1897, Butler went to Sydney with the Wellington art dealer McGregor Wright to study pictures in the National Art Gallery of New South Wales.[2] Between 1898 and 1900, Butler undertook art studies abroad.[1] While on studies abraod, Butler married his first wife, Sarah Jane Popplestone, on 29 April 1899 at Lyndhurst, Hampshire.[2] Butler studied at the Lambeth School of Art, and the Académie Julian in Paris, where he gained honours.[1] He later studied at the Antwerp Academy, winning a gold medal and laurel wreath in 1900.[2]
Butler returned to Wellington in 1900 and exhibited in Wellington and Christchurch art society exhibitions that year.[1] In 1901 he settled in Dunedin and exhibited there until 1905.[1] Butler's paintings won praise at the Otago Art Society exhibitions, but life as a professional artist without private means gave little financial reward.[1] He supported himself by giving tuition in drawing, and was commissioned to complete a number of portraits of city dignitaries.[2] In 1905 he returned to England and settled in Bristol, teaching art at Clifton College.[1] Butler was elected to the Royal West of England Academy in 1912 after establishing a reputation as a portrait and landscape artist in oils and watercolours.[2] Butler also exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Academy and the annual salon exhibition at the Société des Artistes Français in Paris.[1]
The New Zealand Expeditionary Force War Museum Committee approached Butler to be an official New Zealand war artist because of his reputation as an artist and his New Zealand connections.[1] He was appointed with the honorary rank of captain in September 1918 and joined the New Zealand Division in France later that same month.[1] He carried a sketchbook in which he made pencil drawings of actual operations and war scenes, often under fire.[1] These sketches were later used as the basis for his paintings. After the Armistice, he returned to sketch all the New Zealand battlefield sites in Belgium and France.[1] After being demobilized on 31 December 1918, Butler was privately commissioned by Robert Heaton Rhodes and Major General Sir Andrew Hamilton Russell to do a further series of senior officer portraits and a number of large landscapes of New Zealand battlefield site along the Western Front.[1] It was Rhodes's intention to persuade the New Zealand government to purchase these works.[2] The New Zealand cabinet finally agreed to the idea in September 1921 and approved payment, including the purchase of a further two large works and 26 smaller paintings recommended by the New Zealand High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Sir James Allen.[2]
Butler never returned to New Zealand. Following Sarah Butler's death at Trimley, Suffolk, on 15 March 1928, he married Monica Susan Boyce in London on 29 April 1929.[2] He died at Twickenham on 9 August 1936, survived by his second wife and two children, Bernice and Brian, of his first marriage.[1][3]