MARIE-Louise Roosevelt Butterfield became a successful and prolific artist, although her life was blighted by family tragedy.

Born in 1889, she was the daughter and only child of Frederick and Jessie Butterfield of Cliffe Castle.  The ‘Roosevelt’ part of her name came from her maternal grandmother who was related to the US president, Theodore Roosevelt. 

Marie-Louise’s family were successful worsted spinners and manufacturers and owned mills in the Keighley district. They also exported textiles and other goods to the USA and to the Far East.  

Family members regularly visited the US on business trips and both Marie-Louise’s father and grand-father had met their future wives there.

Her grand-father was Henry Isaac Butterfield, who over a nine year period, with the help of his son, Frederick, had rebuilt the original smaller building, known then as Cliffe Hall, into the now renamed Cliffe Castle. 

Marie-Louise was born in Ghent, as her father, who had moved to the USA in 1888, and married Jessie Kennedy Ridgway the same year, had been appointed a US Consul for Belgium.  

Marie-Louise showed a talent for art from a young age and in her early teens was enrolled by her parents, both enthusiastic supporters of the arts, at the Académie Julian in Paris, a progressive and liberal institution, welcoming to women students.

Her studies at the Académie were concentrated on observation and learning to draw with a pencil - a skill that served her well in her later work.

She showed a particular aptitude for portraiture, and three portraits in coloured pencil were accepted for exhibition at the Paris Salon when she was still just in her mid teens.

When her parents moved from the US back to England, to Oxford, Marie-Louise joined them and became more experienced in painting with watercolours and oils, as well as with crayon and pastel. 

She was accepted for membership by the Society of Women Artists and awarded a prize by the Royal Amateur Art Society.

When Henry Isaac Butterfield died in 1910, Frederick inherited Cliffe Castle and it became their family home. 

Although her subject repertoire was wide, Marie-Louise developed a reputation for her detailed interior and exterior building scenes, including those at Cliffe Castle, and later at Thoresby Hall, Nottinghamshire, her final home.

In 1918 she married Captain Gervas Pierrepont and moved to London with him, although was a frequent visitor to Cliffe Castle and to Thoresby Hall, the Pierrepont family seat, in Nottinghamshire.

Marie-Louise and Gervas became the parents of three children, but two died in childhood. Their only son, Evelyn, aged four, died of scarlet fever in 1928, and 18 months later their eldest daughter, Mary, aged nine, died of septicaemia following an operation on her adenoids. 

To further compound this tragic period of their lives, Marie-Louise’s mother had also died in 1927 after a long illness. Their third child, Frederica Rozelle, born in 1925, survived and became a mariner, successful author, and community worker.

A memorial stained glass to their two deceased children was later commissioned by their parents and can be found in the St John the Evangelist Church at Perlethorpe, near Thoresby Hall.

In 1940 Gervas inherited the title for the estate as the 6th Earl Manvers and Marie-Louis became known thereafter as Countess Manvers. 

At Thoresby Hall, Countess Manvers, in addition to interior scenes, also painted staff at the Hall and local people from the nearby village. 

On the death of her father in 1943, Countess Manvers inherited the by now rundown Cliffe Castle estate and it was later sold on to Keighley Corporation and converted for public use as a park and museum in the mid 1950s.

From the late 1940s onward, and with an independent income, Countess Manvers travelled widely across Europe and North Africa painting local scenes.

There is an extensive collection of over 600 examples of her work in The Pierrepont Collection at the Thoresby Hall estate in Nottinghamshire.  Bradford Museums and Galleries Service also own paintings by her and these are displayed at Cliffe Castle.

Countess Manver’s paintings and drawings, particularly of the interior and exterior scenes at Cliffe Castle and at Thoresby Hall, are today important historical records of how these two building looked when they were still family homes.

Countess Manvers died in 1984.