KATE ELIZABETH BUNCE

   Kate Elizabeth Bunce was born in Birmingham in 1856, the daughter of John Thackray Bunce, a newspaper proprietor and chairman of the City Art Gallery. She was a prize-winning student at Birmingham School of Art in the 1880s.
   Her first works reflect her schooling but she was soon drawn to the Pre-Raphaelite mode. She exhibited from 1887 to 1912 in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and London. In 1893, she was among the artists invited to contribute to a sequence of historical pictures for Birmingham Town Hall in England. In 1888, she was made an Associate of the Birmingham Society of Artists and went on to be a founding member of the Birmingham-based Society of Painters in Tempera in 1901.
   A devout Christian, she produced several works for churches, often in conjunction with her sister, a metalworker and water- colorist. Around 1910, she concentrated on large-scale work for church interiors in Britain and Canada. She died in 1927 in Birmingham.