Emily Farmer

She was one of three children of John Biker Farmer, who worked for the East India Company, and his wife Frances Ann (née Frost). She was home-educated and instructed in art by her brother Alexander Farmer, a genre painter.[1]

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.[2]

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.[1]

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.[3]

• Long, Basil Somerset (1912). "Farmer, Emily" . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• B. S. Long, rev. Charlotte Yeldham. "Farmer, Emily (1826–1905)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33080. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)