Margaret Backhouse

Margaret Backhouse (née Holden) (1818–1896) was a successful British portrait and genre painter during the 19th century. Although she was born near Birmingham, Backhouse spent most of her life in London where she showed works on a regular basis at the Royal Academy, the Society of Women Artists and at the Royal Society of British Artists.

Biography Backhouse was born at Summerhill near Birmingham and grew up in Woolstaston in Shropshire. Her father was the Reverend H Augustus Holden and the family lived in Brighton for a time. Backhouse attended a school in Calais before taking art classes in Paris for a year. She studied under a painter named Grenier and a watercolour artist named Jean-Baptiste Desire Troivaux. Later Backhouse would take further lessons from William Mulready and from the engraver Edward Goodall. In April 1845 she married the artist Henry Fleetwood Backhouse and began to raise a family while continuing to paint. Backhouse died on 18 May 1896 at 3 Lichfield Villas, Kew. Her husband died on 1 February 1901 at The Avenue, Kew.