Studio: international art (55.1912)

Sir George Reid's Portraits

The portraits of sir

GEORGE REID, R.S.A. BY
A. STODART WALKER.

Our interest in Raeburn is not merely confined
to an admiration for his masterly use of paint and
his never-failing skill as a draughtsman. The
historian is grateful to him for a picture gallery of
the famous Scots men and women of his time,
■which has assisted us greatly in a realisation of
character. To Sir George Reid posterity will owe
a similar debt. There are few men who have
taken a foremost place in the making of modern
Scotland that have escaped the genius of his
brush, and the only possible drawback to such a
fact is that eventually the Scottish National Por-
trait Gallery may complain of an embarras de
richesses. And Sir George Reid’s unerring ability
to secure the likeness of his sitter—with a certainty
that few painters have ever exceeded—is a

matter for which the future will not fail to express
gratitude.

Born in 1841 in Aberdeen, the future President
of the Royal Scottish Academy came of a family
which gave three brothers to the sum of Scottish
painting. Two younger brothers, Archibald and
Sam, achieved notable success in the craft, the
former, indeed, in some of his canvases claim-
ing a right to no mediocre position in the history
of Scottish landscape painting. After study in his
native city and in Edinburgh, Mr. George Reid
proceeded to Holland as a pupil of Mollinger,
where, as a fellow-student with Artz, he imbibed
a good deal of the best elements of the Dutch
renaissance as expressed by his master, Bosboom,
Roelofs, and Weissenbruch, and which was to come
to further maturity in the work of Mesdag, Mauve,
and the brothers Maris. From the studio of
Mollinger Reid passed to Paris, where he painted
under Yvon, and before returning home spent