LOUISE RAYNER (BRITISH 1829-1924)
OLD HOUSES, HEAD OF WEST BOW
Estimate: £6,000 - £8,000
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale | Lots 112- 206 | Thursday 05 June from 6pm
Description
Signed, watercolour
Dimensions
56.5cm x 46cm (22.25in x 18in)
Provenance
MacConnal-Mason & Son Ltd, London
Lyon & Turnbull, The Drambuie Collection Part I, 26 January 2006, lot 127
Footnote
Edinburgh’s mile-long High Street spans the Castle, perched at the top of the Old Town, and Holyrood Palace, in the lee of Arthur’s Seat. The street, better known as ‘The Royal Mile’, will be familiar to any tourist who has paid Edinburgh even the briefest of visits owing to its central location, historical significance and iconic architecture. Louise Rayner’s watercolour The Royal Mile, Edinburgh demonstrates how little the area has changed in around 175 years.
Rayner was born in Derbyshire in 1832, but by the early 1840s her family had moved to London. The Rayners were an artistic family, with both parents and five of their daughters earning a living by their art. Louise first exhibited an oil at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1852 at the age of twenty, and by 1860 she had committed exclusively to watercolour painting as her medium of choice. Louise would accompany her brother Richard, an architect, as his profession took him around Britain, which is likely how the pair came to visit Edinburgh. The detail and subtle tone of Louise’s Edinburgh watercolours demonstrate her mastery of the notoriously unforgiving medium.