George Edmund Butler ((1872-01-15)15 January 1872 – (1936-08-09)9 August 1936) was a landscape and portrait painter specialising in oils and watercolours.
In 1892 he joined the avant-garde Wellington Art Club, founded by Nairn, and soon established a local reputation for his paintings of seascapes.
[1] During a period spent in England, Butler married his first wife, Sarah Jane Popplestone, on 29 April 1899 at Lyndhurst, Hampshire.
[1] Butler was elected to the Royal West of England Academy in 1912 after establishing a reputation as a portrait and landscape artist in oils and watercolours.
He observed a number of military operations, some while under fire, during his time with the division, making drawings in a sketchbook carried for this purpose.
[1] Demobilised from the NZEF on 31 December 1918, Butler was privately commissioned by Robert Heaton Rhodes and Major General Sir Andrew Hamilton Russell, commander of the New Zealand Division, to do a further series of senior officer portraits and a number of large landscapes of New Zealand battlefield site along the Western Front.
This was agreed to in September 1921 and payment to Butler was approved, including the purchase of a further two large works and 26 smaller paintings recommended by the New Zealand High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Sir James Allen.