Elizabeth Frances Batty (1791-1875) was a talented British amateur artist. She likely studied with the watercolourist and drawing master John Glover, OWS. Her sole known work is a group of pen, brush and wash drawings recording the journey she took through Italy in 1817 with her father, a doctor and fellow of the Linnaean Society. These drawings were engraved and published by the London firm of Rodwell & Martin in a volume in 1820 (Italian Scenery from Drawings made in 1817 by Miss Batty). Such books enjoyed a surge of popularity in Britain following the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the newfound accessibility of the Continent to British travellers. The publication was a critical success, with a contemporary critic describing the illustrations as showing Batty’s ‘eminent topographical taste’. Several of Batty’s drawings were also used as designs for transferware produced by the Staffordshire potters Enoch Wood & Sons. Despite the quality of her drawings, her artistic career seems to have been curtailed by her marriage in 1822 and no other work by her is known.

Forty-four of Batty’s drawings for Italian Scenery were only recently rediscovered, having long been erroneously attributed to her son. One of nine drawings now in The Courtauld’s collection, this delicately detailed composition shows ample evidence of the artist’s skill and powers of observation.