Louise Ingram Rayner (21 June 1832 – 8 October 1924) was a British

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour ( Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the ...

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

Family

Rayner was born in

Matlock Bath Matlock Bath is a village and civil parish in Derbyshire, England. It lies in the Derbyshire Dales, south of Matlock on the main A6 road, and approximately halfway between Buxton and Derby. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

.Simon Fenwick, ‘Rayner, Samuel (1806–1879)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 14 Feb 2011
/ref> Her parents Samuel Rayner and Ann Rayner (née Manser) were both noted artists, Samuel having been accepted for exhibition at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

when he was 15. Four of Louise's sisters—Ann ("Nancy"), Margaret, Rose and Frances—and her brother

Richard Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'st ...

were also artists. Her eldest sister Ann Ingram Rayner (Nancy) exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water Colours and three times at the

. The family lived in Matlock Bath and

Derby Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original co ...

until 1842 when they moved to London.

Education

Rayner studied painting from the age of fifteen, at first with her father and later with established artist friends of the family such as George Cattermole, Edmund Niemann, David Roberts and Frank Stone. Her first exhibited work, an oil painting entitled ''The Interior of Haddon Chapel'', was shown at the Royal Academy in 1852, the first of a series of

oils An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturat ...

Watercolour

From 1860, however, her medium was watercolour, which she exhibited for over 50 years through organisations including the Society of Lady Artists, The Royal Academy, Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of British Artists.

Chester

She lived in

Chester Chester is a cathedral city in Cheshire, England, on the River Dee, Wales, River Dee, close to the England–Wales border. With a built-up area population of 92,760 in 2021, it is the most populous settlement in the borough of Cheshire West an ...

in the county of

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...

but travelled extensively, painting British scenes, during the summers in the 1870s and 1880s. Her paintings are very detailed and highly

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

populated street scenes capturing the "olde worlde" character of British towns and cities in the booming Victorian period. Her paintings are very popular today as prints and on

jigsaw puzzle A jigsaw puzzle (with context, sometimes just jigsaw or just puzzle) is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaicked pieces. Typically each piece has a portion of a picture, which is comple ...

s. Around 1910 she moved with her sister to

Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells (formerly, until 1909, and still commonly Tunbridge Wells) is a town in Kent, England, southeast of Central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone ...

, and later to St Leonards, where she died on 8 October 1924, aged 92.

Collections

Rayner's work is represented in the collections of at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum,

Bournemouth Bournemouth ( ) is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority area, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. At the 2021 census, the built-up area had a population of 196,455, making it the largest ...

, Derby Museum and Art Gallery and the Grosvenor Museum,

, which possesses 23 of her watercolours, the largest in any public collection.

References

Sources

*Simon Fenwick, "Rayner, Samuel (1806–1879)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 26 June 2007Louise Rayner
Chester City Council

External links

DudleyMall page featuring many works * Information site by relative {{DEFAULTSORT:Rayner, Louise 1832 births 1924 deaths 19th-century English painters 20th-century English painters English watercolourists Artists from Derbyshire English women watercolourists 20th-century English women painters 19th-century English women painters