Elizabeth Thompson

At the Royal Academy summer show of 1874 in London, one painting drew such crowds that a policeman had to be posted beside it to keep the room moving. It was called "The Roll Call," and it showed exhausted Grenadier Guards answering their names in the snow after a battle in the Crimean War. The artist was Elizabeth Thompson, in her twenties and almost unknown, and she had walked straight into the most male of all Victorian subjects, the battle picture.

The reception was extraordinary. Fellow artists reportedly applauded on varnishing day, and Queen Victoria wanted the picture so much that she had it bought for the Royal Collection, where it stays today. What set Thompson's war apart was her vantage point, down among the tired, cold, ordinary soldiers of the ranks.

She went on painting battles for decades, works like "Scotland Forever!," the headlong charge of the Scots Greys cavalry at Waterloo, and after marrying the army officer William Butler she is usually known as Lady Butler. Full membership of the Royal Academy, though, never came, and in 1879 she reportedly missed election by two votes.