She returned to London with her family when her little brother Claude suffered a knee infection and her parents did not want to see his leg amputated.

A network of young aspiring professional women artists was formed who tried to establish a 'Sisterhood in art' as an alternative to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

[2] Howitt entered Henry Sass's Art Academy in London in 1846, where her contemporaries included the future Pre-Raphaelites William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Thomas Woolner but also her artistic sister Eliza 'Tottie' Fox.

[3] One of these sittings -probably arranged by Cary for Howitt- was for a portrait of the American painter John Banvard who visited London in February 1849 to exhibit his panoramic Mississippi River Valley painting.

The younger group of her associates consisted of the Langham Place feminists, notably her close friend the artist Barbara Leigh Smith: these joined Rossetti's Folio Club.

She had begun painting this picture after she ended her engagement with her fellow artist Edward La Trobe Bateman in the summer of 1853.

She painted it in outdoor sunlight and according to her friend and fellow artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti 'it was a most difficult task, and a very good picture'.

Although he indicated some 'executive deficiencies' he called her work 'the most remarkable contribution…and noticeable alike for delicate depth of feeling and for conscientious study.'

He welcomed her as a Pre-Raphaelite artist by highlighting her 'unmistakable adherence to the English Preraphaelite practice, evidenced in the unconventional simplicity of the figure, the rendering of broad out-door sunshine, and the affectionate care bestowed upon the accessories.'

Stone had previously singled out the Pre-Raphaelite Brethern, most notably Millais, Hunt and Rossetti, for a personal attack and publicly ridiculed their works in the early 1850s.

The success of her debut led, according to her mother Mary who wrote to Annie's American publisher on March 31, to two commissions, one from the lady Angela Burdett-Coutts.

Anna Mary Howitt, Barbara Leigh Smith and Bessie Rayner Parkes became highly intrigued by this young naturnal born talent who they regarded as 'a genius'.

His diagnosis of scoliosis led Leigh Smith to help organise a convalescent stay for Miss Siddal (or Lizzie as they would call her) in Hastings.

[7] Family accounts record her distress over criticism from John Ruskin of her ambitious painting of Boadicea or Boudica which was also rejected by the Royal Academy.

Anna Mary Howitt was a friend of John Everett Millais, Ruskin's protégé and Effie Gray's future husband.

Howitt's subsequent mental breakdown may have contributed to her retreat from the professional art world, but her own account, published under a pseudonym in Camilla Dufour Crosland's Light in the Valley: My Experiences of Spiritualism(1857), suggests a neurological event, perhaps the onset of frontal lobe epilepsy.However, she did not cease to exhibit works.

This society, founded in 1855 for women artists made it possible for women who had great difficulty in obtaining a public showing of their works and a proper art education (Their education in the arts was limited and they had been excluded from the practice of drawing from the nude figure since the Royal Academy was founded) to find a public venue.

Her Pioneers of the Spiritual Reformation (1883) consisted of biographical sketches of the German poet Justinus Kerner and of her father William Howitt.

Though the whereabouts of her surviving oil paintings were still not known in 2019, a large number of Howitt's "spirit drawings" — images originated without her conscious control — remain in the archives of the College of Psychic Studies in London.

With the expanding public interest in spirit-driven artists such as Emma Kunz and Hilma af Klint, Howitt's drawings are currently receiving greater academic attention.

[9] Anna Mary Watts died of diphtheria in 1884 at Mair am Hof in Teodone (Brunico) [de], during a visit to her mother in Tyrol (since 1919 part of Italy).