Winifred Mabel Brunton née Newberry was a South African painter, illustrator and Egyptologist.
Background
Brunton was born in 1880 in the Orange Free State South Africa. Her father, Charles Newberry, a millionaire who made his money in Kimberly, was the builder of Prynnsberg Estate. Her mother Elizabeth was the daughter of a missionary to Moshoeshoe I and was herself intensely artistic.
Education
University College London.
Career
She became best known for her portraits of Egyptian pharaohs, published as Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt (1926) and Great Ones of Ancient Egypt (1929). At University College London they trained with Margaret Murray, before travelling to Lahun in Egypt to join Flinders Petrie for fieldwork in 1912-1914. Guy and Winifred both continued to contribute to excavations organised by Flinders Petrie"s British School of Archaeology in Egypt in the 1920s at sites like Badari, with Winifred drawing many of the objects discovered.
Brunton died, aged 78, in Clocolan, Free State, South Africa.
Her portraits have been hugely influential and defined the faces of the Pharaohs and the Queens in Popular culture and have been adopted in many films and documentaries.