Henrietta Ward

Henrietta Mary Ada Ward (1 June 1832, London – 12 July 1924, Slough) was an English historical and genre painter of the Victorian era and the early twentieth century.

She belonged to a family that produced professional artists over several generations. Her paternal grandfather was the prominent animal painter James Ward, who was related by marriage to fellow artists John Jackson and George Morland. Her parents were also artists: George Raphael Ward was best known for his printmaking, Mary Webb Ward for her miniatures. (One of her mother's pictures was Portrait of Henrietta Ward and her Favorite Guinea Pig, 1843.) An only child, the young Henrietta grew up surrounded by and familiar with her parents' artist acquaintances, including Sir Edwin Landseer, C. R. Leslie, and the brothers John James and Alfred Edward Chalon. She studied her craft at the Bloomsbury Art School and the academy started by Henry Sass.

In 1843, when she was 11 years old, Henrietta fell in love with the 27-year-old historical painter Edward Matthew Ward (no relation); they married secretly in May 1848, aided by the groom's friend Wilkie Collins — so that her maiden and married names were the same. (Traditional sources occasionally refer to her as "Henrietta Mary Ada Ward Ward.") Henrietta's mother never forgave the elopement, and disinherited her.

(Collins may have based the plot of his 1852 novel Basil on the Ward engagement. In turn, Henrietta claimed to have given Collins the idea for The Woman in White.)

E. M. and Henrietta Ward had eight children, one of whom would be Leslie Ward, the caricaturist and cartoonist known as "Spy." While raising her brood, Henrietta pursued her own artistic career; she worked in various genres, though she, like her husband, was noted for her historical pictures, on subjects like Thomas Chatterton and Elizabeth Fry. She was also noted for her pictures of children; she used her own children as models for her paintings.

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