A Woman's Life of War Pictures: Elizabeth Butler (1846-1933)
Résumé
Elizabeth Butler made a career as a battle artist and narrated the progress of her career and many travels abroad in several pieces of autobiographical writing (Letters from the Holy Land, 1903; From Sketchbook and Diary, 1909) illustrated with her own watercolours. In 1922, at the age of 76, she published her autobiography, which included reproductions from her sketchbooks. These texts give a rare glimpse of the formative years of a woman artist, one who was to excel in a genre dominated by men. The autobiography uses a double-voiced narrative to an ironic effect, thus rebutting the traditional masculine ethos of life writing: extracts from her teenage diary expressing youthful enthusiasm and na\"ive hopes are included, contrasting with the words of the mature and successful artist. Butler also tackles her legitimacy as a female military artist, describing how she was able to overcome the hurdle of her sex. \textcopyright 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.