Joanna Mary Boyce

She began a formal study of drawing by the age of eleven with Charles John Mayle Whichelo, and filled multiple sketchbooks as a young teenager.

[7] At the age of eighteen she entered Cary's art academy, and afterwards worked under James Mathews Leigh, at his school in Newman Street, London.

[7] Following the exhibition, Ruskin praised Boyce's painting:The dignity of all the treatment—the beautiful imagination of faint but pure colour, place this picture, to my mind, among, those of the very highest power and promise.

[17] At the time of her death, contemporaries remarked on Boyce's talent as an artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti described her as "a wonderfully gifted woman",[18] and another obituarist called her a genius.

The art historian Pamela Gerrish Nunn notes that Boyce drew comparisons to the Venetian old masters from contemporary critics.

[23] Writer Simon Poë additionally observes that Boyce's time at Couture's atelier impacted her work with influences from the Classical Academic and Romantic traditions.

Portrait of Joanna Mary Boyce and three family members, seated around a table. — This photograph is a reproduction of H. T. Wells' painting *Conversation Piece* , depicting George Price Boyce, John Clayton, Joanna Mary Boyce, and the artist, H. T. Wells. ^{[

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