Mary Newton (29 June 1832 -- 2 January 1866), painter, was the daughter of Joseph Severn

Joseph Severn

Joseph Severn was an English portrait and subject painter and a personal friend of the famous English poet John Keats...

, the artist and friend of Keats. She was taught to draw by her father, and then on the Severn family's return to England in 1841, studied with George Richmond

George Richmond

For the 21st century educator see George H. RichmondGeorge Richmond was an English painter.George Richmond was the father of the painter William Blake Richmond as well as the grandfather of the naval historian, Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond.A keen follower of cricket, Richmond was noted in one...

. In 1857 she received lessons from Ary Scheffer

Ary Scheffer

Ary Scheffer , French painter of Dutch and German extraction, was born in Dordrecht.-Life:After the early death of his father Johann Baptist, a poor painter, Ary's mother Cornelia, herself a painter and daughter of landscapist Arie Lamme, took him to Paris and placed him in the studio of...

 in Paris. She specialized in portraits of children and worked in crayon, chalk, pastel and watercolour. In the mid 1850s she supported her family with a number of commissions, traveling to the homes of wealthy patrons. Her first picture to be exhibited at the Royal Academy was The Twins in 1852, a portrait of her younger brother and sister. During this time she also painted portraits of Queen Victoria's children and nephew.

In 1861 she married the archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton

Charles Thomas Newton

Sir Charles Thomas Newton was a British archaeologist. He was made KCB in 1887.Newton was born at Bredwardine in Herefordshire, and educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the British Museum in 1840 as an assistant in the Antiquities Department...

, who became Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. She made drawings of Greek sculpture for his public lectures and also designed illustrations for his History of the Discoveries at Helicarnassus, Cnidus, and Branchidae (2 vols, 1862-63) and Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (2 vols, 1865). A number of her important sketchbooks, which make up an important picture-diary of her travels in the eastern Mediterranean and contain witty caricatures of the family, are in the possession of Severn descendants.

In the 1860s she began to work in oils and exhibited a number of pictures in the Royal Academy exhibitions, most notably a self-portrait (National Portrait Gallery, London) and an Arthurian subject from Tennyson

Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the first Baron Tennyson, was an English poet.Tennyson may also refer to:-People:* Baron Tennyson, the barony itself** Alfred, Lord Tennyson , poet...

, Elaine (exh. 1863). She died of measles in 1866 at the age of thirty-three, having had no children.