Anna Massey lea Merritt (1844-1930), a talented painter, who like Gladstone hovered on the fringes of the pre-Raphaelites surmised that:

"The chief obstacle to a woman's success is that she can never have a wife. Just reflect what a wife does for an artist: Darns the stockings; keeps his house; writes his letters; visits for his benefit; wards off intruders; is personally suggestive of beautiful pictures; always an encouraging and partial critic. It is exceedingly difficult to be an artist without this time-saving help. A husband would be quite useless.”

Grace Elizabeth Gladstone (nee Page) was born in Birmingham in 1873. Her father the Reverend Richard Page died in 1879 leaving a modest estate.  It would seem that the family left Birmingham soon after and by 1881 she was living in Lewisham, London in the house of her aunt and uncle.

By 1891 she was a student in Sydenham, first at Annie Martha Gladstone’s school for girls at Forest Hill, but later in the nearby Crystal Palace School of Art which had relocated there in 1858.  Her early teachers, Harry Windsor-Fry (1862-1947) and Herbert Bone (1853-1931), were both obscure, talented artists who were feeling the afterglow of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. It was  around this time that Grace met Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945), who was studying at the same school. In 1898 Grace became the subject of one of Fortescue-Brickdale’s book plates and it is telling that they enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools within a few months of one another.

Gladstone remained at the Royal Academy after her marriage to George Edward Gladstone in 1896, developing an accomplished style, which benefited from the system, which saw visiting academicians teach in the school for short periods. In 1895, she could count names such as John Singer Sargent, John William Waterhouse, Frank Bernard Dicksee and William Blake Richmond among her many distinguished tutors.

The 1901 census describes her as an artist and sculptor, living in the house of her husband’s parents. It was about this time that she would be become reacquainted with Annie Martha Gladstone (1857-1932) who, writing under a male pseudonym, authored “Another View on Jane Austen's Novels.” She also contributed other essays to the same journal: one about Ralph Waldo Emerson, delves into the Feminism of the American poet and novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) and Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), an early advocate on the rights of women. Another essay of 1906, criticised the state of politics, literature and society in general.

The radicalism of the house seems to have left some impression on her. And her frequent exhibitions at the Royal Academy between 1902 and 1907, give her addresses as Settlement Houses, first Mansfield House in Canning Town and later the Passmore Edwards Settlement in Bloomsbury. She and her husband appear to have been devoted members of this reformist movement, with him serving as the warden of Tavistock Place from 1903-1912. It is likely that both would have been there to witness the historic debate between Millicent Fawcett and Mary Ward on the direction of women’s suffrage in 1909.

The  direction of her artistic career in the next few decades is uncertain. At some unspecified point she was committed to a mental asylum and her dealings with the Royal Academy end in 1907, the year she had the first of her three children.  

Gladstone died in 1964 at the age of 91. Like many female artists of the period she was the victim of remarkable longevity, outliving her family, friends, and perhaps more importantly the stylistic period to which she and her works belonged.