ABSTRACT
At the age of seventeen Louisa Waterford, as Louisa Stuart, was presented at court as a debutante. This rite of passage for aristocratic and upper-class young women brought them into the adult society of court circles and conveyed to the world that they were eligible to marry. She broke the hearts of a number of men, by Augustus Hare's account, yet, unusually for the era, the Stuart parents did not pressure their daughter to accept the marriage proposals she received. The background of Waterford's marital life provides a context against which to assess John Ruskin's censorious comments on her inability to fulfil the aims he set for her art. The biographical details of Louisa Waterford's marital life illustrate how art was only one dimension of a full and busy schedule, which actively involved her with duties towards her husband's estate and wide-ranging practical charitable schemes.
