Unearthed work by forgotten Glasgow Girl set to fetch thousands

A previously unseen collection of sketches and paintings by a forgotten Glasgow Girl artist could fetch thousands of pounds after they emerged for sale at auction later this month.
May Reid Glasgow GirlMay Reid Glasgow Girl
May Reid Glasgow Girl

The works were completed by Mary "May" Reid, while studying at the Glasgow School of Art between 1914 and 1921.They include a portfolio of sketches, studies and life drawings, as well as paintings including Pollok Country Park and the Art School's now lost Mackintosh Library.

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.

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The pictures will go under the hammer at Bonhams in Edinburgh on October 11 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.

Included in the collection are over 30 paintings by some of Scotland's most renowned artists of the past 100 years, such as John Duncan Fergusson, Joan Eardley, Anne Redpath, Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, John Bellany and Peter Howson.

Together, they are expected to fetch up to £325,200.

The proceeds will be gifted equally 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 is among the works to be sold at Bonhams, where it is now estimated to make £7000-10,000.

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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 going to watch the auction online and I hope they do well."

Mr Jones said he hoped that by selling Reid's work, more people would learn about her, adding: "I admire the Glasgow Boys very much, but the 1990 exhibition showed that the 'Girls' were just as good."

After graduating, Reid travelled widely in the South of France, before returning to Glasgow where she married Andrew Tannahill in 1931. The couple would become well known in the city's cultural circles from the late 1920s to the 60s.

Close friends included the poet Hugh MacDiarmid and artists such as J.D. Fergusson. However, Reid's own artistic talents were largely forgotten.