Tate Britain acquires first painting by pioneering English female artist overlooked for a century

Louise Jopling, one of the most famous British female artists of the 19th century, pictured in 1890. Photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty Images

She was one of the most famous British female artists of the 19th century, a suffragist who exhibited at the Royal Academy, was praised by Victorian art critics and was admired by contemporaries including James McNeill Whistler, who painted her portrait.

But for more than a century Louise Jopling has been dismissed by the art establishment as an amateur, her huge body of work and professional career overlooked by successive curators of the national collection.