WILLIAM STEWART MACGEORGE RSA
Castle Douglas 1861 - 1931 Gifford
Ref: CC 168
The swan's nest among the reeds
Signed lower right: W S MacGeorge
Oil on canvas: 24 x 29 in / 61 x 73.7 cm
Frame size: 31 x 37 in / 78.7 x 94 cm
Painted circa 1909
Provenance:
Private collection
Sotheby’s New York, 19th October 1984, lot 161;
Richard Green, London;
private collection, USA, 1985
Exhibited:
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1909, no.143, as ‘And to him I will discover the Swan’s Nest among the Reeds’
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition, 4th May-15th August 1914, no.690
London, Richard Green, Modern British Paintings, May 1985, no.14, p.30, illus. in colour p.31
William Stewart MacGeorge was a painter of landscapes, portraits and figure subjects. He studied initially at the Royal Institution Art School in Edinburgh before going on to the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp, with friend and fellow student EA Hornel, where they studied under Charles Verlat (1824-1890), the best-known Belgian teacher of his day and an advocate of French Realism in the tradition of Courbet. On his return to Scotland, MacGeorge continued his training at the Life School of the Royal Scottish Academy and was awarded the Keith Prize in 1887. He also had a studio in Kirkcudbright where he would paint during the summer. He was elected Associate of the RSA in 1899, and became an Academician in 1910, exhibiting regularly at the Academy and at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts. In 1929 he married the watercolour painter, Mabel Victoria Elliot, the widow of artist Hugh Munro, and they settled in Gifford East Lothian, where MacGeorge died in November 1931.
