George Reid (Scottish artist)

Sir George Reid

Sir George Reid (31 October 1841 – 1913) was a Scottish artist.

Early life and education

Reid was born in Aberdeen in 1841. He developed an early passion for drawing, which led to his being apprenticed in 1854 for seven years to Messrs Keith & Gibb, lithographers in Aberdeen. In 1861 Reid took lessons from an itinerant portrait-painter, William Niddrie, who had been a pupil of James Giles, R.S.A., and afterwards entered as a student in the school of the Board of Trustees in Edinburgh.

Samuel Smiles (1891) by George Reid

Career

Reid returned to Aberdeen to paint landscapes and portraits for any trifling sum which his work could command. His first portrait to attract attention, from its fine quality, was that of George Macdonald, the poet and novelist, now the property of the University of Aberdeen. His early landscapes were conscientiously painted in the open air and on the spot. But Reid soon came to see that such work was inherently false, painted as the picture was day after day under varying conditions of light and shade. Accordingly, in 1865 he proceeded to Utrecht to study under Alexander Mollinger, whose work he admired for its unity and simplicity. This change in his method of viewing nature was looked on as revolutionary by the Royal Scottish Academy, and for some years his work found little favour in that quarter; but other artists gradually adopted the system of tone-studies, which ultimately prevailed. Reid went to Paris in 1868 to study under the figure painter Yvon; and he worked in 1872 with Jozef Israëls at the Hague. From this time forward Reid's success was continuous and marked.^[1]

He showed his versatility in landscape, as in his Whins in Bloom, which combined great breadth with fine detail; in flower-pieces, such as his Roses, which were brilliant in rapid suggestiveness and force; but most of all in his portraits, which are marked by great individuality, and by fine insight into character. His work in black-and-white, his admirable illustrations in brushwork of Edinburgh and its neighbourhood, and also his pen-drawings, about which it has been declared that "his work contains all the subtleties and refinements of a most delicate etching," must also be noted. Elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1870, Reid attained full membership in 1877, and took up his residence in Edinburgh, at 17 Carlton Terrace on Calton Hill,^[2] in 1882. In 1891 he was elected President - a post which he held until 1902 - receiving also the honour of knighthood, and he was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. ^[1]

Known Works

• Alexander Bain, University of Aberdeen
• Arthur James Balfour, University of Edinburgh
• Henry Calderwood, University of Edinburgh
• Portrait of James Edward Crombie FRSE, Aberdeen Art Galleries
• Robert Flint, University of Edinburgh
• Alexander Campbell Fraser, University of Edinburgh
• Alderman Sir James Hoy, Manchester Art Galleries
• David Masson, University of Edinburgh
• Robert Rainy, University of Edinburgh
• Peter Guthrie Tait, University of Edinburgh
• Sir John Usher of Norton and Wells, Usher baronets, University of Edinburgh

Family

His brother, Samuel Reid (born 1854), was also a painter and a writer of tales and verse.^[1]

References

1. Chisholm 1911.
2. Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1889-90

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Reid, Sir George". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Works by George Reid at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about George Reid at Internet Archive
• BBC Your Paintings: works by George Reid in public British collections