Mary Lemon Waller

Mary Lemon Waller was a British portrait painter who specialized in portraits of children. She was born to Rev. Hugh and Mary Fowler of Gloucestershire in 1851. Mary’s early education in the arts occurred at Gloucester Art School. She went on to study at Royal Academy Schools where she was a very successful student. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy when she was 26 years old.

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In 1874 Mary married Samuel Edmund Waller who was a genre painter. The couple resided in London and had one son. Mary continued to paint as a married woman. She
exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1925 she became the first honorary female member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
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Mary specialized in portraits of children that captured their character and spirit. In a review written in The Queen, The Lady’s Newspaper, John Kemp wrote in 1890, “Her talent, like that of Reynolds and Lawrence, is less in the ideal than in the excellent management of what she sees before her, and the power of perception rather than invention has enabled her to produce those works which have from time to time delighted the public.” The popularity of her work lead to commissions from Italy, the United States and South America.

Mary Waller’s works can be seen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History; Somerville College, Oxford; the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne and in The Bennett Collection of Women Figurative Realists.

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