Bertha Newcombe

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Bertha Newcombe (17 February 1857 – 11 June 1947) was an English artist and suffragist.

The fourth of seven children of an entrepreneurial father with an interest in education and art, she grew up mainly in Surrey. Aged 19, she entered the Slade School of Art in London and later is believed to have studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. She exhibited works in the French naturalist style in the Paris Salon and at the Society of Lady Artists and the Royal Academy in London, with some critical success.

In the 1890s, Newcombe became active in the Fabian Society and she made portraits of a number of prominent socialists, as well as being romantically involved with George Bernard Shaw. At this time the family home – where she had a studio – was in Chelsea, and she became a more-or-less full-time illustrator for publishers of magazines and novels. By the time of the resurgence of the women's suffrage movement in the early years of the twentieth century, she had almost completely stopped working as an artist, but campaigned for the suffragist movement in various capacities. When their father died, in 1912, Bertha and her sister Mabel inherited a sizeable estate. They moved to Hampshire and largely withdrew from public life.