This essay responded to a brief from editors Francesca Zappia (independent curator, Glasgow) and TANK Art Space (Marseille), asking for the focus to be on women students at the Glasgow School of Art and at the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists in the late 19th century. The publication itself retrospectively is linked to the exhibition ‘Raoul Reynolds: a Retrospective’ (2016), curated by Zappia and Tank Art Space (Marseille) at Scotland Street Museum, Glasgow, as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art; and La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille (2016). The editors asked for my text to utilise some elements of the fictitious Raoul Reynold's life; in particular, focussing on Reynolds' mother, an early feminist and artist who went to the Glasgow School of Art at the end of the 19th century. The editors specified that the text could take different forms, from the mother's diary, to a straight research text about this period.
In my subsequent research of The Glasgow Society of Lady Artists, there was little information on the names of the founding eight members. The structure of the essay therefore had to find a way to have a clear division between the fictitious character of Reynold's mother Henriette Aliès-Reynolds; whilst presenting true historic documentary evidence pertaining to the eight founding members.
The first section of the essay outlines the context in the 1880s' of Glasgow School of Art that a student like Henriette Aliès-Reynolds would have found herself in. It goes on to give a summary of Glasgow Society of Lady Artists and why it was founded, with detail on first membership costs and its principal aims. The second section of the essay presents my selected archival research including press cuttings, Mitchell Library Special Collection holdings, research from online marriage registers and references from wider existing scholarly work on this period. These are used to trace, where possible, the points at which the eight founding members of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists are recorded.
The book editors are Francesca Zappia (independent curator, Glasgow) and Amandine Guruceaga (TANK Art Space, Marseille). The four other publication contributors are Éric Mangion (Director of Exhibitions at the Villa Arson, Nice, France), curator and art critic Thimothé Chaillou and art historian Anna Dezeuze (L’école supérieure d’art & de design Marseille-Méditerranée). The publisher is Poursuite Editions, a french-based publisher focused on photography and related topics.
The publication follows the exhibition ‘Raoul Reynolds: a Retrospective’ (2016), curated by Zappia and Tank Art Space (Marseille) at Scotland Street Museum, Glasgow, as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. The exhibition also was at La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille (2016). ' Raoul Reynolds: A Retrospective' was the result of a collective and collaborative exhibition made by twelve artists and a curator. It aimed to further develop the existing cultural exchange that forms part of the cooperation and twinning agreements between the two cities of Glasgow and Marseille. Thus, the twelve artists – Stéphanie Cherpin, Helen de Main, Sandro della Noce, Guillaume Gattier, Amandine Guruceaga, Benjamin Marianne, James McLardy, Douglas Morland, Philippe Murphy, Emilie Perotto, Bobby Niven and Alys Owen – represent the emergent artistic, and notably sculptural, scenes of the two cities. Together, they have collaborated and signed their works under the name of Raoul Reynolds.