Norah Neilson Gray

Norah Neilson Gray (16 June 1882 – 27 May 1931) was a Scottish artist of the Glasgow School. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy while still a student and then showed works regularly at the Paris Salon and with the Royal Academy of Scotland. She was a member of The Glasgow Girls whose paintings were exhibited in Kirkcudbright during July and August 2010. She was first privately taught by two local art teachers, Misses Park and Ross, at a studio at Craigendoran, outside Helensburgh. She trained under the Belgian artist Jean Delville and the Scottish painter Fra Newbery. In 1905, while still a student, Gray had her portrait of her sister Gerty accepted for display at the Royal Academy in London.

Gray also taught at St Columba's School, Kilmacolm which at the time was a girls' school. Gray was said to have been nicknamed "Purple Patch", because of her insistence that colours could be seen in shadows if you looked correctly. The painting was shown in Glasgow in 1916, at the Royal Academy in 1917 and at the Paris Salon in 1921 where it was awarded the bronze medal. A painting Hôpital Auxilaire 1918 from that time was offered to the Imperial War Museum but the Women's Work Sub-committee of the Museum refused to accept it and requested a painting showing Miss Frances Ivens and other women involved in the care of wounded French soldiers. Hôpital Auxilaire 1918 shows the vaulted 13th-century Royaumont Abbaye, near Paris, where women had organised a hospital to treat the casualties of the war. Her second painting of Royaumont Abbaye, entitled The Scottish Women's Hospital In The Cloister of the Abbaye at Royaumont. Dr Frances Ivens inspecting a French patient was accepted by the IWM in 1920.

Later life After World War I, Gray returned to her work as a portraitist, most commonly painting young women and children. The painting Little Brother is held at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. In 1978 her sister, Tina, left Hôpital Auxilaire 1918 to Helensburgh on the condition that a permanent place be found to exhibit it. The painting now hangs in the town's library.