Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes (1859 - 1912). Elizabeth Adela Forbes was a Canadian painter who was primarily active in the UK. She often featured children in her paintings and School Is Out is one of her most popular works. She was friends with the artists James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Walter Sickert, both of whom influenced her work. Her etchings in particular are said to show the influence of Whistler. After studying and working in continental Europe, Forbes settled in Newlyn, England where she raised her son and established a school with her husband, Stanhope Forbes. She had her works exhibited in notable shows and won medals for her works. Her paintings are in collections of museums in Canada, United States and England. Born in Kingston, Ontario, Elizabeth Armstrong was the youngest child of William Armstrong, an employee of the Government of Canada. Born in her father's old age, she was educated privately in Canada and then allowed to further her artistic studies in England with her mother as chaperone. Her father died two months later, after which she and her mother lived with an uncle in Chelsea, London. They lived next door to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but she never met him. In 1889 she married Newlyn School painter Stanhope Forbes. Their son, Alec, was born in 1893. In 1904 she and her husband settled at Higher Faugan, a house which they designed and had built for themselves. In 1909 she pursued cures and restorative periods for cancer in France and London, but died in 1912. In an obituary she was dubbed the Queen of Newlyn for her contributions to the art colony. Her husband remarried following her death. As a young girl, Elizabeth Armstrong, later Forbes, traveled with her mother to England and studied at the South Kensington Art School. She then returned to Canada, during which time her father died. From 1877 to 1880 she studied at the Art Students League of New York with William Merritt Chase, who recommended that she next study in Munich. Following his advise, Armstrong went to Germany and studied with J. Frank Currier and Frank Duveneck in the early 1880s. In 1882 she explored plein air painting at the artists colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany. She also taught etching there. While in Brittany she sent paintings to London for sale at the Royal Institute and all of the items that she sent were sold on the opening day of the show. The following year she was in London where she worked as a print maker and joined the Society of Painter Etchers. In the summer of 1884 she studied near Haarlem in Zandvoort, the Netherlands with William Merritt Chase. She worked in oil, watercolour and pastels and made etchings of children, landscapes and fishing scenes. Her works were exhibited in London at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the Royal Academy. Some of her etchings, influenced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Walter Sickert, were collected by her Pont-Aven mentor, Mortimer Menpes. In the autumn of 1885, Armstrong and her mother moved to Newlyn, Cornwall. She established a studio in Newlyn, sharing the building with a fisherman who stored and repaired nets in the space. She won a medal at the Paris International Exhibition in 1891 and a gold medal for an oil painting at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Between 1893 and 1899 she participated in more than 63 exhibitions in London. After Newlyn, Armstrong lived in St. Ives, where she met Stanhope Forbes, whom she married in 1889. Going against societal roles for married women, Elizabeth Forbes continued to be an active and successful artist after marriage. Further, in 1899 she and her husband Stanhope Forbes opened the Newlyn Art School. They also were instrumental in the creation and ongoing success of the new Passmore Edwards Art Gallery at Newlyn, also known as the Newlyn Art Gallery. Her works of art, many of them of children, including her son Alec, were influenced by French realism. She was a successful artist, more successful than some of her male counterparts and had a national reputation, most commonly associated with the Newlyn School, or Forbes School. The Newlyners gained popular approval because their subject matter fell into the traditional and still vital categories of Victorian genre painting. They also depicted the positive and nostalgic image of provincial life and the moral values their urban audience desired.