Laura Barbara Sutherland Clunas (1863-1936)

This bucolic scene is most probably the painting exhibited by Clunas at the Royal Academy in 1899 entitled A child of Brittany. Laura Barbara Sutherland Clunas trained under Sir Hubert von Herkomer at his art school in Bushey, whose alumni included Arnesby Brown, Algernon Talmage and Lucy Kemp-Welch among others. It was also where she met her future husband, the painter Harry Fidler. They lived for a time at Teffont Magna, Wiltshire, before ultimately settling at the White House, Stoke, near Andover. She exhibited extensively during her lifetime at the Royal Academy, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Society of Women Artists.