Rose Mary Barton was an Anglo-Irish artist; a watercolourist who painted landscape, street scenes, gardens, child portraiture and illustrations of the townscape of Britain and Ireland. Barton exhibited with a number of different painting societies, most notably the Watercolour Society of Ireland (WCSI), the Royal Academy (RA), the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), the Society of Women Artists and the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS). She became a full member of the RWS in 1911. Her paintings are in public collections of Irish painting in both Ireland and Britain, including the National Gallery of Ireland and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in Dublin, and the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

The Society of Women Artists (SWA) is a British art body dedicated to celebrating and promoting fine art created by women. It was founded as the Society of Female Artists (SFA) in 1855, offering women artists the opportunity to exhibit and sell their works. Annual exhibitions have been held in London since 1857, with some wartime interruptions.