THE READER

Pencil and watercolour on paper. Measuring 22.5 x 10.5cm. Signed lower left. In fine condition, the colours bright and fresh. Mounted, framed and glazed.

A beautifully executed watercolour painting depicting a well dressed young lady, seated, reading a book in front of a large tree. The ruins of an abbey or church are in the background, with hills in the distance. 'Glasgow Girl' Katherine Cameron (1874-1965), studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1889 to 1893 where she became associated with a small circle of female students who called themselves 'The Immortals'. The group included the sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald, Janet Aitken, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, John Keppie, Herbet McNair, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Her paintings, blending Art Nouveau, Celtic Revival, Arts and Crafts movement, and Japonisme aesthetics lent themselves to book illustration. As a student she contributed illustrations for 'The Yellow Book' and was later contracted by the London publishers T. C. and E. C. Jack to illustrate Fairy Tale gift books. Cameron exhibited widely in a career spanning nearly seven decades. Her first was in 1891 at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, where she exhibited 'September Flowers'. A year later she was elected a member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists, and of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1897. Her final solo exhibition took place in 1959 at T&R Annan & Sons, Glasgow.