Mary Lloyd

Mary Charlotte Lloyd (23 January 1819 – 13 October 1896) was a Welsh sculptor who studied with John Gibson in Rome and lived for decades with the well-known philosopher, animal welfare advocate, and feminist Frances Power Cobbe. Biography Lloyd was born in Denbighshire, Wales, the eighth of seventeen children, and the first of six girls, to Edward Lloyd of Rhagatt and his wife Frances Maddocks. Her father was a substantial squire over many counties, owning 4,300 acres of land, and Mary inherited money from a maiden aunt, Margaret, as well as gifts from Eleanor Charlotte Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the Ladies of Llangollen. Both her parents died in 1858. She studied and worked with the French artist Rosa Bonheur. In 1853 she was working in the studio of Welsh sculptor John Gibson in Rome, along with the American sculptor Harriet Hosmer. Lloyd met Frances Power Cobbe in the winter of 1861–1862, in Rome. Mary and Frances networked with like-minded women in Italy in the period, both being nonconformist, with a feminist outlook. In 1863, they settled together in London.