Private
Collection
Collection
Norah Neilson Gray
(1882 - 1931)
Young Woman with Cat, circa 1928
Private Collection
Norah Neilson Gray (1882 - 1931)
Oil on canvas
Signed39 x 20 in. (99.0 x 50.8 cm)
Size:
Height – 99cm
Width – 50.8cm
I was not properly introduced to Norah Neilson Gray until a few years
ago, during the course of my B’ job on the Antiques Roadshow at
Kelvingrove in Glasgow, where I valued a really lovely painting of hers
from the 1930s and fell in love with her work. You might say that she was
a local artist, for she was born in Helensborough nearby and became one
of the Glasgow Girls’, known to her students as Purple Patch’ because of
her insistence that there is colour in shadows and her liking for pattern
and flowers. She was uniquely Scottish and uniquely her, evolving a
distinctive style to become the foremost female Scottish painter of her
day. Her success was perhaps only possible in the enlightened cultural
atmosphere of Glasgow at the turn of the century, under the benign
and encouraging influence of Fra’ Newbery, Director of the Glasgow
School of Art, where Gray was taught and later in turn became a teacher.
She flowered in Newbery’s hothouse, where the dominant influence
on her was the Belgian artist Jean Delville, a Symbolist painter (and
Theosophist) who spoke little English but was an inspirational teacher,
grafting exotic continental ideas onto solid Scottish stock.
This girl, with a cat on her lap and some pansies, also sat to Gray for
her painting Little Brother, in the Kelvingrove collection, but we don’t
know who she is ‚Äì perhaps one of Gray’s sisters. Her severe profile is
softened by muted browns and soft creams, painted with a flat brush, and
the yellows in the cat’s eyes and of the pansies give the picture a vibrant
rhythm. There’s even purple in the patches of shadow!
Commentary by Rupert Maas, dealer and historian specialising in Victorian and modern British art. He has
appeared on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow since 1997. As proprietor of the Maas Gallery in Mayfair,
founded in 1959, he has curated many exhibitions and supplied collections all over the world.
Norah Neilson Gray attended the Glasgow School of Art (1901′
06) under Fra Newbery (1855’1946), who sought to promote
women’s inclusion in art and academia. Indeed, Gray became a
member of the Glasgow Girls whilst studying and returned to
teach at the school soon after leaving.
By 1910 she had her own studio and held her first solo
show at the Warneuke’s Gallery, Glasgow. She also exhibited at
the RSA, Glasgow Society of Lady Artists and the Paris Salon,
and illustrated an edition of Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth (1913).
After volunteering as a nurse during WWI, she was
commissioned to paint the Scottish Women’s Hospital at
Royaumont Abbey. In 1921, she became the first woman to be
appointed to the Hanging Committee of the RGI and was also
awarded a bronze medal by the Soci t des Artistes Français for
her painting The Refugee.