Kate Elizabeth Bunce

Date of birth: 1856 — Date of death: 1927

Painter. Daughter of John Thackray Bunce (1828-1899), newspaper proprietor and chairman of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Bunce attended the Birmingham School of Art in the 1880s. She is known for her assimilation of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Her direct, well-drawn method of working shows the influence of the Birmingham School. Bunce later turned to the medieval influence of the Pre-Raphaelites as seen in the ambitious painting The Chance Meeting (1907) and The Keepsake (1898-1901), which is held by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. She exhibited widely in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and London.Bunce was an Associate of the Birmingham Society of Artists and was invited to contribute to the sequence of historical pictures for Birmingham Town Hall in 1893 (now lost). In 1901, she was a founder member of the Birmingham-based Society of Painters in Tempera.