Emily Florence Etheridge née Payne (1857-1935) – An Allegory of Pride

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Emily Florence Etheridge née Payne (1857-1935)

Emily Payne was a talented artist of the late 19th and early 20th century. She was born in July 1857 at Oxford and baptised on the 21st September the same year. Her parents Edward and Emily Payne ran a grocery shop initially at 32 Broad Street, and later 31 Broad Street, Oxford. Emily attended Kate McNeill’s school in Iffley Road and by 1881 was working as a governess in Southampton. In 1895 she married William Austin Gray Etheridge (1867-1958) an assistant master of the exclusive Westminster School. By family repute she was friendly with John Ruskin who is said to have critiqued her work, and examples are said to exist with his annotations. She may have studied at Ruskin’s drawing school in Oxford, however she may also have known Ruskin through her husband who worked alongside members of the Liddell family. Ruskin had given Alice Liddell (thought the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) drawing lessons when she was thirteen years old, and Alice’s father had been the headmaster for Westminster School.

Emily exhibited one work titled ‘In Veere’ at the Royal Academy in 1914, and has an entry in Christopher Wood’s artist dictionary Victorian Painting. Her nephew was the society portrait painter Maurice Codner (1888-1958).