Anne Laura Herford (October
16, 1831 - October 28, 1870) was
the first woman Royal Academy Schools pupil in 1860.Partner Mary Millicent Montgomery
Queer Places:
40 Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury, London W1T 6EY, UK
Anne Laura Herford (October
16, 1831 - October 28, 1870) was
the first woman Royal Academy Schools pupil in 1860.
She was a British artist in the early 19th century, and in 1860, was the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Academy schools. Her career was relatively short, but during that time she exhibited at the Royal Academy twelve times.
Herford was born on 16 October 1831, probably in Altrincham, Cheshire, the ninth and youngest child of John Herford (1789–1855), wine merchant and philanthropist, and Sarah Smith (1791–1831), artist and teacher, daughter of Edward Smith. Laura Herford lived at 40 Fitzroy Square, London, and studied at Heatherley's School of Fine Art off Oxford Street. She studied under Eliza Fox, an artist best known for her genre and portraiture scenes which incorporated contemporary social commentary. Fox held drawing classes for female artists in the living room of her father's home in Regent's Park. Amongst others, Barbara Bodichon and Anna Mary Howitt attended these classes and others run by London-based artists. From the mid-1850s, Herford was heavily involved with the acceptance of women artists. She signed the 1859 petition to admit women to the Royal Academy.
Laura Herford made history in December 1860 when she submitted drawings to the Royal Academy Schools signed with the gender-neutral initials "A. L. Herford". Admitted on pure artistic merit, the Academy's admission letter was inadvertently addressed to "L. Herford, Esq." Upon discovering Herford was a woman, the Academy honored the admission, breaking the gender barrier and enabling women to pursue formal academic art training in Britain. When Helen moved to London in 1866, she lived at 40 Fitzroy Square with Laura, who served as her guardian and mentor during her early years in the capital.
She became a pupil in 1861 as the only woman at the Academy. She exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1861 to 1869 and also at the Suffolk Street Gallery and the British Institution. Hereford exhibited in 1864 a picture entitled A Quiet Corner, and followed up her success by similar domestic scenes in 1865, 1866, and 1867. She invited her sister's daughter, the painter Helen Allingham, to come live with her in London at the start of her career.
In London, Laura Herford lived as a long-term companion to Miss Mary Millicent Montgomery (who had previously lived as a companion to Lady Byron, Anne Isabella Milbanke). Within 19th-century queer and women's history research, such companionate cohabitations—often termed "Boston marriages" or female romantic friendships—represented vital frameworks of independence for women outside heterosexual marriage.
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