A collection of sketches and paintings completed over a century ago by a forgotten Glasgow Girl artist has fetched thousands of pounds at auction in Edinburgh.
The works were completed by Mary “May” Reid between 1914 and 1921, while she was studying at the Glasgow School of Art.
They included her portfolio of sketches, studies and life drawings, as well as watercolours of Pollok Country Park, near where she lived.
Reid and her husband, the Scots poet, writer and translator Andrew Robert Tannahill, both died in 1986 and her artworks were passed on to their only child Mabel, who died last year aged 90.
They went under the hammer at Bonhams in Edinburgh as part of the Tannahill Jones Collection of Scottish art put together lovingly over more than 30 years by Mabel and her husband David Jones.
The Tannahill Jones Collection – which also included 30 paintings by some of Scotland’s most renowned artists of the past 100 years, such as Joan Eardley, Anne Redpath, Dame Elizabeth Blackadder and Peter Howson – made a total of £328,000.
Proceeds from the sale will be gifted to the Andrew Tannahill Fund for the furtherance of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow – established by Mabel in 2007 – and the David T Jones Fine Arts Fund at Bangor University in North Wales.
May Reid was born in Glasgow in 1897. She studied drawing and painting at the Glasgow School of Art during a “period of enlightenment” under its progressive head Fra Newberry.
The term Glasgow Girls was later given to the group of women artists and designers active in Glasgow around that time, although Reid never received the recognition she deserved during her lifetime.
It took until 1990 for the group’s accomplishments to be fully recognised in a major exhibition, Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920.
The exhibition featured Reid’s lifesize painting of two winged angelic figures titled “Night and Day”, which she submitted as her graduation piece. The pre-Raphaelite style oil painting was among the works sold at Bonhams, where it was sold to a Scots collector for £15,360.
Reid’s portfolio from her time at Glasgow School of Art, fetched £2560, while her set of four watercolour landscapes of Pollok Country Park, painted in her mid-teens around 1913, fetched £640.
Mr Jones, 92, said: “After the Glasgow Girls exhibition, which included May’s work, Mabel and I decided to start our own collection of Scottish paintings, which we did over the following 30 years.
“We determined many years ago that, when the time came, we would sell all the paintings through Bonhams in Edinburgh and that all the proceeds would be gifted to the University of Glasgow and Bangor University in Wales.
“I’m delighted that these paintings, which were dear to both of our hearts, will now go to new homes where they will continue to be cherished, and that the proceeds will go to these two funds, which do tremendous work.”
May Matthews, Bonhams’ Managing Director, Scotland, said: “Throughout May’s lengthy time at the Glasgow School of Art she studied drawing and painting… and benefitted from attending the school under the legendary director, Fra Newberry, who supported men and women students equally.
“The work of the Glasgow Girls was largely forgotten until Jude Burkhauser’s 1990 blockbuster exhibition Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920 when their accomplishments were finally recognised again.
“Burkhauser’s research highlighted not only women’s vital contribution to the development of the Glasgow Style but also their capacity to overcome the inequalities they faced in society at that time.”
Highlights of the Tannahill Jones collection included Joan Eardley’s “Tenement”, which fetched £40,960, and John Maclauchlan Milne’s painting of “Corrie, Arran”, which made £28,160 and “Hill Village”, by Anne Redpath, which sold for £17,920.
