Annie Russell Merrylees

Annie Russell Arnold (née Merrylees; 19 December 1866 – 5 September 1959) was a British miniature painter who worked in Scotland.

Life

She was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England in 1866. She studied in Edinburgh, first in the School of Art, under Mr. Hodder, and later in the life class of Robert Macgregor; afterward in Paris under Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. Arnold thought it important for miniature painters to do work in a more realistic medium occasionally, and something of a bolder character than can be done in their speciality.^{[citation needed]}

She never studied miniature painting, but took it up at the request of a patroness who complained that she could find no one who painted miniatures. This lady gave the artist a number of the Girl's Own Paper, containing directions for miniature painting, after which Arnold began to work in this speciality. She painted a miniature of Lady Evelyn Cavendish, owned by the Marquis of Lansdowne; others of the Earl and Countess of Mar and Kellie, the first of which belongs to the Royal Scottish Academy; one of Lady Helen Vincent, one of Edith Phillips, the daughter of Lionel Phillips, and several for prominent families in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Her work was exhibited in the exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. In 1903, she exhibited miniatures of Miss M. L. Fenton, the late Mrs. Cameron Corbett, and the Hon. Thomas Erskine, younger son of the Earl of Mar and Kellie.^[1]

She married Reginald E. Arnold (d. 1938), a sculptor.^[2] For a time, her address was 7 Gloucester Mansions, Harrington Gardens, London, S.W.^[3] She died in Ascot, Berkshire, in 1959, aged 92.^[4]

Selected works

Dorothy Girt in Barnard
Lady Helen Vincent
A Little Flower of France
Miss Mischief

References

This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: C. E. C. Waters' "Women in the Fine Arts: From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D." (1904)

^ Waters, Clara Erskine Clement (1904). Women in the Fine Arts: From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. (Public domain ed.). Houghton, Mifflin. p. 22.
^ Gray, Sara (2009). The Dictionary of British Women Artists. Casemate Publishers. pp. 24–. ISBN 978-0-7188-3084-7.
^ The Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (Public domain ed.). Royal Scottish Academy. 1903. pp. 43–.
^ Arnold, Annie Russell: National Probate Calendar, 1959, ancestry.com. Accessed 21 February 2024.(subscription required)

[Waters1904-1] Waters, Clara Erskine Clement (1904). Women in the Fine Arts: From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. (Public domain ed.). Houghton, Mifflin. p. 22.

[Gray2009-2] Gray, Sara (2009). The Dictionary of British Women Artists. Casemate Publishers. pp. 24–. ISBN 978-0-7188-3084-7.

[3] The Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (Public domain ed.). Royal Scottish Academy. 1903. pp. 43–.

[4] Arnold, Annie Russell: National Probate Calendar, 1959, ancestry.com. Accessed 21 February 2024.(subscription required)

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