Key Works

Trained in England and France as a portraitist, Sophie Pemberton embraced the academic realist style, creating images that were accurate reflections of specific individuals. She also painted exquisite and technically difficult figure studies of leisured women as well as genre scenes of people at work. Away from the studio, she broadened her interests and her style, incorporating Impressionist qualities in her landscapes and urban views. In midlife, family tragedies overwhelmed her for a few years and, later, with eyesight failing, she focused on decorative domestic art inspired by Dutch and Flemish painters of mythological birds and detailed floral compositions.