Katherine Cameron

Katharine Cameron RWS RE (26 February 1874 – 21 August 1965) was a Scottish artist, watercolourist, and printmaker, best known for her paintings and etchings of flowers. She was associated with the group of artists known as the Glasgow Girls.

Early life and education Born in Hillhead, Glasgow, she was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Cameron and the sister of the artist David Young Cameron.

She studied at the Glasgow School of Art, from 1889 to 1893 where she became associated with a small circle of female students who called themselves 'The Immortals'. The group included the sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald, Janet Aitken, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, John Keppie, Herbet McNair, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. During her time at the Glasgow School of Art she contributed illustrations for The Yellow Book and the student publication The Magazine.

Around 1902 she travelled to France and enrolled at the Atelier Colarossi, studying under Gustave Courtois. lent themselves to the book illustration format, and she contracted with London publishers T. C. and E. C. Jack in 1904 to provide art for books of fairytales. In 1909 she took up the needle again and etched two further plates entitled 'April' and 'The Tryst', each of which depicted bees and blackthorn blossom. and The Art Journal for the "naturalistic and at the same time exceedingly decorative" treatment of her plates whilst having "the true race feeling of the Celt for love and legend."

Painter of flowers & landscapes Cameron was a prolific watercolourist and this eventually became her predominant medium of choice throughout her career. At the early stages of her career she painted a broad range of subjects ranging from romantic figure studies, Scottish folklore and ballads, as well as flower studies. She exhibited widely, and at the age of 22 she had already been elected to the Royal Scottish Watercolour Society.

Cameron also produced landscapes and regularly exhibited these alongside her flower studies and still life pictures. Cameron and her husband Arthur Kay, made regular trips to the Scottish Highlands where she spent time sketching the landscape, particularly the area around Connel, Achnacree Moss, Loch Etive, and Benderloch. Aucassin and Nicolette (12th Century French Song Story) (1908) Amy Steedman – Legends and Stories of Italy (Jack, 1909) Louey Chisholm – In Fairyland: Tales Told Again (Jack, 1910) Louey Chisholm – Celtic Tales, Told to the Children (Jack, 1910) James Richmond Aitken – In a City Garden (Foulis, 1913) Edward Thomas – The Flowers of Love: An Anthology of Flower Poems A Series of 24 Drawings in Colour (Jack, 1916) US edition, The Flowers I Love: A Series of Twenty-Four Drawings in Colour by Katharine Cameron, with an Anthology of Flower Poems, selected by Edward Thomas (Stokes, 1917), Iolo Aneurin Williams – Where the Bee Sucks: A Book of Flowers (Poems Chosen by I. A. Williams) (Medici Society, 1929) Fiona Grierson – Haunting Edinburgh (John Lane, 1929) Katherine Cameron – Iain the Happy Puppy: Being the Autobiography of a West Highland Terrier (Moray Press, 1934)

Later life In 1928, at the age of 54 she married art collector Arthur Kay (1860–1939), whose interest in Jacobite and Scottish artifacts played a role in building the collection of the Scottish Modern Arts Association. After Kay's death, Cameron carried on painting and exhibiting but stuck predominantly to flowers as there was no one to drive her to the Highlands to paint the scenery. Glasgow Museums, Glasgow Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen British Museum, London Victoria & Albert Museum, London Tate, London The Fleming Collection, London Washington Library of Congress, Washington D.C.