Sir William Russell Flint
Watercolourist of Spanish women and Highland rivers, and the most widely published print artist of his generation.
William Russell Flint was born in Edinburgh in 1880, trained as a lithographic draughtsman, and worked as an illustrator for the Illustrated London News before establishing himself as a watercolourist of extraordinary technical fluency. He is known for two things: landscapes and river scenes in Scotland and France, and the Spanish and gypsy subjects with loosely draped women that made him popular and, in some quarters, unfashionable. He was elected President of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours and knighted in 1947. He died in 1969.
This is a name where identifying what is actually in front of you is the whole job, because the printed output is enormous and is regularly mistaken for original work. There are unique watercolours and drawings; there are signed limited-edition reproductions published in his lifetime, pencil-signed in the margin and often with a Fine Art Trade Guild blindstamp; and there are very large numbers of unsigned open-edition prints, book plates and later reproductions. The signature in the image is printed on all of them. The pencil signature, the blindstamp and the margin are what separate the categories.
If you own a work by Sir William Russell Flint
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.