Lot 29: Kate Elizabeth Bunce , 1858-1927 the standard-bearer oil on canvas

signed with monogram l.r. oil on canvas

measurements note 76 by 45 cm., 30 by 18 in.

Birmingham Society of Artists, Spring Exhibition, 1894, number not known;
Manchester City Art Gallery, Birmingham City Art Gallery and Southampton City Art Gallery, Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists, 1997-1998, no. 71

Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists, 1997, illus. p. 34 and p. 146

Christie's, 6 November 1995, lot 218 as A Knight;
Private collection

PROPERTY OF A LADY
Kate Elizabeth Bunce is one of the most interesting female artists from the later group of Pre-Raphaelite artists living and working in Birmingham. She was the daughter of a newspaper proprietor and chairman of the City Art Gallery, John Thackray Bunce. She trained at the Birmingham School of Art in the 1880s and was much influenced by the work of Rossetti and by Burne-Jones who had been born in Birmingham and was regarded as a local hero by her contemporaries. Bunce exhibited widely from 1887 to 1912 and in 1893 she was invited to contribute to the murals being painted for Birmingham Town Hall. In 1901 her painting The Keepsake was chosen as 'Picture of the Year' at the New Gallery exhibition of 1901, the same year that she became a founding member of the Society of Painters in Tempera. In her later years she concentrated upon painting large-scale paintings for churches in Britain and Canada, displaying her strong Christian beliefs.

The Standard-Bearer was well received when exhibited in Birmingham in 1894, where it was described as; 'a dignified and well-composed presentation of an ideal personage in the picturesque ages of war. Evidently not a man who takes up his duties with a light heart or in a frivolous spirit, but one to whom the field of glory has tragic elements.' (Birmingham Daily Post, 25 April 1894, p. 7)