[1] Ann Mary Newton was born in Rome, where her father Joseph Severn was the British Consul.

[1] Newton was taught to draw by her father, and then on the Severn family's return to England in 1841, studied with George Richmond, who employed her to produce copies of portraits he had painted.

In Paris she painted a portrait of Mary Bruce, Countess of Elgin which was well reviewed and led to further society commissions in Britain.

In 1861 she married the archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton, who became Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum.

A number of her 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.