Elizabeth Adela Forbes

ELIZABETH ADELA FORBES

Ottawa 1859 - 1921 Newlyn

Elizabeth Armstrong first visited England as a young girl. She and her mother stayed with an uncle in Chelsea, next door to Rossetti, an artist whom she admired but never met. She returned with her mother to Canada and in about 1877 she visited friends in America and joined the Art Students League in New York, where she studied for two to three years. She then moved first to Munich and later to Brittany.

In 1883 Elizabeth had three works accepted by the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours and the same year, a painting entitled 'Summer' was exhibited at the Royal Academy. In addition to her work in oils and watercolours, she was a brilliant etcher, however the problems associated with printing in Cornwall caused her to abandon this medium as early as 1886. She and her mother settled in Newlyn during the autumn of 1885, where she met Stanhope Forbes whom she married in 1889. Ten years later they founded the Newlyn School of Painting.

An ardent believer in the principles of plein-air painting, Elizabeth also developed her special aptitude for depicting children and held two exhibitions devoted entirely to his theme, entitled Children and Child Lore at the Fine Art Society in 1900 and Model Children and Other People at the Leicester Galleries in 1904.