Charlotte Elizabeth James (Miss C. E James) was born on the 20^th September 1877 at Richmond, Victoria. She was the second of nine children born to Charles and Catherine (Kate) Young. She appears to have followed her sister, Catherine Annie, to the National Gallery School in 1901, and was friends with Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Jessie Traill and Norah Gurdon. Miss James completed the course in 1907 and became an exhibiting member of the Victorian Artist Society.

Charlotte had a studio at no. 1 Spring Street in Melbourne and held a solo exhibition of 145 paintings at the Athenaeum Gallery in 1922.

She travelled to England in around 1923 with her sister, Catherine, where the pair set up a studio together in Chelsea. In 1924, Charlotte exhibited at the Royal Portrait Society’s Exhibition at their Galleries in Piccadilly, London with “An Anzac”. She exhibited with them again in 1925 at their exhibition held at Burlington House, London.

In March 1927 she exhibited watercolours and oil paintings of the Gippsland and Tasmanian landscapes at the Graham Gallery in London to favourable reviews. In 1928, she had a painting accepted at the Salon in Paris.

Meanwhile, Catherine had two pictures accepted by the Women’s International Society of Painters in 1929, and had been invited to join the Society.

The sisters returned home to Australia in February of 1935 where Charlotte died in Melbourne on the 6^th October the same year. Her sister, Catherine, died in 1936.

Charlotte was never married and owned 2 parcels of land at the time of her death, which she bequeathed to her brothers.