her fame increased as the paintings toured europe, along with photographs of elizabeth, she gained even more notice because people found out that she was both young and pretty, something normally not associated with painters of battle scenes. it also helped that during this time there was a huge swell of victorian pride and romanticism for the growing british empire. while lady butler's topics reflected such romanticism, her paintings were generally realistic in detail with aspects such as confusion, mud and exhaustion being accurately portrayed. her works tend to focus on british troops shown in action, or shortly after it, but avoiding scenes of hand-to-hand combat. the troops are often shown as their opponents might have seen them, but relatively few of the opponents themselves are shown.