Baroness Emma Orczy

Artist Biography

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Baroness Emma Orczy was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. Some of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London.

Baroness Emma Orczy was born in Hungary and was the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and his wife, Countess Emma Wass. Family friends at their Hungarian Estates included Gounod Liszt, and Wagner. Her parents left Hungary in 1868, fearful of the threat of a peasant revolution. They lived in Budapest, Brussels and Paris.

Finally, in 1880 the family moved to London, where they lodged with their countryman Francis Pichler at 162 Great Portland Street. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art, where she met her future husband, Montague Maclean Barstow, whom she married 1894.

Baroness Emma Orczy died in 1947.

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