Myra Louise Bunce (1854–1919) was an English

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

, metalworker and

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

associated with the

Arts and Crafts movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

and the

Pre-Raphaelites The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti ...

Family

1981P83 The Life Class Birmingham School of Art

Bunce was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

, Warwickshire. She was the elder daughter of John Thackray Bunce and Rebecca Ann Bunce (). Her younger sister Kate Bunce was also a painter.

Education

Bunce studied primarily at the

Birmingham School of Art The Birmingham School of Art was a municipal art school based in the centre of Birmingham, England. Although the organisation was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and is now part of Birmingham City University's Faculty of Arts, Design a ...

(1879–1891) although she also submitted pieces for examination to South Kensington School of Art. The Birmingham School of Art that provided the springboard for Bunce's career as a designer; unusually it encouraged both men and women to design and make objects in a variety of materials and thus led to her interest in

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on e ...

Career

Although Bunce worked as an artist, exhibiting pieces at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

, the Society of Women Artists and also locally in Birmingham and

Walsall Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located ...

, she is best known for her metalworking. In particular with her sister she created two

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a Church (building), church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular a ...

: one for St Mary's Longworth, Oxfordshire and another for St Albans Church, Birmingham. For both of these she created the hand beaten framing to hold the painted panels. The use of metal rather than moulded

gesso A restored gesso panel representing St. Martin of Tours, from St. Michael and All Angels Church, Lyndhurst, Hampshire Gesso (; 'chalk', from the , from ), also known as "glue gesso" or "Italian gesso", is a white paint mixture used to coat rigi ...

is one of the features that distinguishes Bunce's work from that of her contemporaries. Amongst her other work is the frame that holds Kate Bunce's painting ''The Keepsake''. 1977P60 Untitled The Sitting Room

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bunce, Myra Louise 1854 births 1919 deaths 19th-century English painters 20th-century English painters Alumni of the Birmingham School of Art Artists from Birmingham, West Midlands English designers Metalworkers 20th-century English women painters 19th-century English women painters