Emma Barton was an English portrait photographer

Portrait photography

Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people , in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject...

.

Born Emma Boaz Rayson into a working-class family in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, she became the common-law wife

Common-law marriage

Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...

 of a solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

, George Barton. She was introduced to photography by the brother-in-law of her stepfather, and first became known by publishing portraits of Dan Leno

Dan Leno

Dan Leno , born George Wild Galvin, was an English comedian and actor, famous for appearing in music hall and dozens of comic plays, pantomimes, Victorian burlesques and musical comedies during the Victorian era...

, the music hall star and relative of her husband, in 1898. She then began to exhibit portraits and religious subjects, being awarded the Royal Photographic Society

Royal Photographic Society

The Royal Photographic Society is the world's oldest national photographic society. It was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1853 as The Photographic Society of London with the objective of promoting the Art and Science of Photography...

 Medal in 1903 for The Awakening.

In the new century her photography was influenced by Old Master

Old Master

"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...

 paintings, the Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

 and the Pre-Raphaelites

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...

, and she was also a pioneer of color photography

Color photography

Color photography is photography that uses media capable of representing colors, which are traditionally produced chemically during the photographic processing phase...

 using the Autochrome Lumière

Autochrome Lumière

The Autochrome Lumière is an early color photography process. Patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907, it was the principal color photography process in use before the advent of subtractive color film in the mid-1930s....

 process.

After 1918 she ceased to exhibit and photographed only her family. She retired to the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

 in 1932.

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