Bumble Bee and Flowers

Born in Hillhead, Glasgow, the sister of the landscape artist Sir D. Y. Cameron. She studied at Glasgow School of Art under Fra Newbery and in Paris at the Atelier Colarossi. Her early interiors were influenced by the Glasgow Four although her technique is wetter and her drawing less stylized. Her earlier flower pieces from the 1890s and early 1900s tend to be rich in colour and wet in technique; this gave way to a more delicate style with careful drawing and restrained colour, influenced by painters like Joseph Crawhall and Edwin Alexander. The earlier flower pieces depict large bouquets of flowers in bowls, while the later example are typically simple single stems on an open background, often with bees or butterflies. She also experimented with thin oils on silk. During the 1920s and 1930s, she painted landscapes in a linear style, but these later became richer and more expressive. After 1940, she returned to her earlier style of full-blown compositions. Although her great love was flower painting, she also worked as an illustrator and was a highly accomplished etcher. Her series of illustrations for There Were Two Sisters Sat in a Bower, Binnorie-O-Binnorie were discussed in an article in The Art Journal in 1900 and between 1904 and 1910 she illustrated a number of children’s fairy tales and legends. In 1928 she married Arthur Kay, the art collector and connoisseur. She lived in Edinburgh and held a one-man show at the Annan Gallery, Glasgow in 1959. She exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal Scottish Academy, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Royal Scottish Watercolour Society and in France and America. Her work is represented in the Tate Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum and in other collections.