A Corner of the Shelf

Kate Hayllar was one of the four artistically talented daughters of the portrait and figure painter James Hayllar. She was born in London but from 1875 her father took the lease of Castle Priory, a large Thames-side house at Wallingford, Oxfordshire. At the house James Hayllar taught his daughters Jessica, Edith, Mary and Kate to paint in oils and watercolours. The aesthetic interior the Castle Priory, its domestic events, gardens, immediate surroundings and the flowers they grew became their favourite subjects. Kate concentrated her work on small and intensely observed flower and still life subjects and exhibited at the Royal Academy and Royal Society of British Artists. After the death of her mother in 1899 she gave up painting to become a nurse. Showing concern for the hanging and presentation of the picture the inscription on the backboard picture suggesting that it is hung with the light coming from the right hand side is probably an instruction from the artist.