Henrietta Rae. Henrietta Emma Ratcliffe Rae was a prominent English painter of the late Victorian era, who specialised in classical, allegorical and literary subjects.
Her best-known painting is The Lady with the Lamp; depicting Florence Nightingale at Scutari. Henrietta Rae was born on 30 December 1859 in Hammersmith, London, to Thomas Burbey Rae, a civil servant, and Ann Eliza Rae, a musician who had been a student of Felix Mendelssohn.
She had three brothers and three sisters. Rae began formally studying art at the age of thirteen, being educated at the Queen Square School of Art, Heatherley's School of Art and at the British Museum.
Rae reportedly applied to the Royal Academy of Arts at least five times before eventually gaining a seven-year scholarship. Her teachers there included Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who had the strongest influence on her later work, as well as Frank Bernard Dicksee and William Powell Frith.
In 1884 she married painter and fellow Royal Academy student Ernest Normand, but kept her maiden name-a choice considered unusual at the time-because she had already begun to establish her reputation as an artist, having been a frequent exhibitor at the annual Royal Academy exhibitions since 1881. The Normands lived in Holland Park, the residence of many other artists of the day. Frequent visitors included Leighton, Millais, Prinsep, and Watts. However, the attention was not al
Her best-known painting is The Lady with the Lamp; depicting Florence Nightingale at Scutari. Henrietta Rae was born on 30 December 1859 in Hammersmith, London, to Thomas Burbey Rae, a civil servant, and Ann Eliza Rae, a musician who had been a student of Felix Mendelssohn.
She had three brothers and three sisters. Rae began formally studying art at the age of thirteen, being educated at the Queen Square School of Art, Heatherley's School of Art and at the British Museum.
Rae reportedly applied to the Royal Academy of Arts at least five times before eventually gaining a seven-year scholarship. Her teachers there included Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who had the strongest influence on her later work, as well as Frank Bernard Dicksee and William Powell Frith.
In 1884 she married painter and fellow Royal Academy student Ernest Normand, but kept her maiden name-a choice considered unusual at the time-because she had already begun to establish her reputation as an artist, having been a frequent exhibitor at the annual Royal Academy exhibitions since 1881. The Normands lived in Holland Park, the residence of many other artists of the day. Frequent visitors included Leighton, Millais, Prinsep, and Watts. However, the attention was not al
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