Jane Benham Hay
Jane Benham Hay (1829–1904) was an English Victorian painter and illustrator. She is linked with two important art movements of the 19th century: the British Pre-Raphaelites and the Italian Macchiaioli.
Jane was born in Uxbridge, near London, to a family of metal workers. In 1850 she traveled to Munich with her friend Anna Mary Howitt to study art. Women could not attend the Academy, so they asked the director, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, for private study in his studio. He let them work there, though it’s unclear how much instruction they received. Jane stayed in Munich until December 1850.
Anna Mary Howitt later published An Art Student in Munich (1853; reissued 1880) under the pseudonym Clare, referring to Jane.
Jane married artist William Hay in 1851 and had a son in 1852. The marriage did not last; Jane left London for Florence in the mid-1850s. There she met Francesco Saverio Altamura, a painter connected with the Macchiaioli. They eloped, and Altamura, who had a complicated life, left his wife and children. Jane and Altamura had a son, Bernardo (often called Bernard) Hay (1862–1934).
Jane Hay exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1848, 1849, 1859, 1861, and 1862. Her two 1859 works, England and Italy and Portrait of a Boy in Florentine Costume, helped establish her reputation. England and Italy spoke for Italian unification and democracy, though the critic John Ruskin praised the paintings for their mastery rather than their politics. The England and Italy painting disappeared for many years and was rediscovered in the late 1990s.
In 1867 she produced The Florentine Procession, also known as The Burning of the Vanities, which was shown in London and is now in the collection of Homerton College, Cambridge.
Details of her later life are limited. Jane Benham Hay died in Brussels, Belgium, in 1904.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:38 (CET).