Katherine Cameron

• Name — Katharine Cameron • Born — 26 February 1874 • Birthplace — Glasgow, United Kingdom • Died — 21 August 1965 • Education — Glasgow School of Art • Field — Painting, Illustration

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.

Cameron etched her first plate in 1898. 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. Between 1898 and 1938 she etched around eighty eight plates. Influenced by themes such as Scottish folklore, botany, and Japonisme, Cameron developed a signature style which was praised by art critics in international art journals such as The American Magazine of Art 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."

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. In a later interview with Tom Honeyman she was quoted as saying "there is nothing so inspiring as painting flowers." 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. Her landscapes were lavish in colour and she particularly liked to capture the changing light. Her work received favourable reviews from art critics. In 1948, art critic R. H. Westwater stated "Miss Cameron gives us not only the delicious texture of flower and leaf, the sense of delicate growth and movement expressed with an impeccably sensitive draughtmanship. She also fills each painting with a pervasive light, a light other than that which actually illuminates her flowers." Her final one-woman exhibition in 1959 at T&R Annan & Sons, Glasgow consisted of 56 watercolours and drawings of the West Highlands and Islands, which had painted throughout her career.

Cameron exhibited widely. Her first was in 1891 at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, where she exhibited 'September Flowers'. A year later she was elected a member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists, and of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1897. In 1920 she was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, becoming a fellow in 1964. In 1950 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She exhibited widely, including at the Royal Scottish Academy (Edinburgh), the Society of Women Artists, Aitken Dott (The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh), the Fine Art Society (London), Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), Annan (Glasgow), James Connell & Sons (Glasgow & London), and Goodspeed's (Boston).

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. They lived in Edinburgh together until Kay's death in 1939. 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. Cameron died in 1965 at the age of 91.