She was born in
Bocking, Essex, to John Minton Courtauld (died 1877), a member of the
Courtaulds textile company family, and his wife Sarah, née Bromley. She spent one term at the
National Art Training School in South Kensington, and painted in a studio owned by her uncle, the artist
George Hering, where she also met and was advised by
John Rogers Herbert. Her son Axel died of typhoid, in Madeira, in 1896. With no remaining family she sold her house, joined a religious order, and worked among the poor of London's East End. and in
Madeira in the name of the Escola Arendrup, a school founded in 1899 by her friend
Mary Jane Wilson (later the Venerable) to which she contributed funds in memory of her son after he died on the island. ==References==