Emily Farmer (25 July 1826,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

- 8 May 1905,

Portchester Portchester is a locality and suburb northwest of Portsmouth, England. It is part of the borough of Fareham in Hampshire. Once a small village, Portchester is now a busy part of the expanding conurbation between Portsmouth and Southampton on ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

) was an English watercolour painter.

Life

She was one of three children of John Biker Farmer, who worked for the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

, and his wife Frances Ann (née Frost). She was home-educated and instructed in art by her brother Alexander Farmer, a

genre painter Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached ...

Art

Farmer initially painted miniatures, exhibiting two at the Royal Academy in 1847 and 1849, but from 1850 specialised in genre paintings, many of children in rustic surroundings. ''Kitty's Breakfast'' (1883), a picture of a girl in a cottage kitchen pouring a saucer of milk for a kitten, is typical of her style. This, along with ''In doubt'' (1881), is held at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

.In doubt, Museum no. D.395-1905
V&A collections online Other well-known works include ''Deceiving Granny'' (1860), ''The Primrose Seller'' (1867), ''The ABC Class'' (1863), ''The Undecided Purchaser'' (1864), and ''The Listener'' (1872). In 1854 she was elected a member of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours to whose exhibitions she sent ninety-six paintings over a fifty-year period. She also showed works at the Liverpool Academy and the

Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours (RSW) is a Scottish organisation of painters. The first preliminary meeting of the society took place in Glasgow on 21 December 1877 as a reaction to a lack of interest in watercolour art by ...

. Over this period she lived at Portchester House, Hospital Lane, Portchester, Hampshire, where she died in 1905. She is buried nearby in St Mary's churchyard within

Portchester Castle Portchester Castle is a medieval fortress that was developed within the walls of the Roman Saxon Shore fort of Portus Adurni at Portchester, to the east of Fareham in Hampshire. The keep was probably built in the late 11th century as a ba ...

Notes

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Farmer, Emily 1826 births 1905 deaths British women painters People from Portchester English watercolourists British genre painters 19th-century English painters 19th-century British women artists Women watercolorists