Sir William Russell Flint valuation
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.
What a work by Sir William Russell Flint is worth
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 is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
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.
The Royal Watercolour Society, and Shadows in Arcady
Russell Flint was President of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, now the Royal Watercolour Society, from 1936 to 1956, and was knighted in 1947. He also wrote short stories, and in 1965 a collection, Shadows in Arcady, was published in a limited edition of 500, with its layout and illustrations designed by him.
Besides the watercolours and the reproductions, he made original etchings and drypoints, mostly from 1928 onwards, in editions usually of 50 to 135; Harold Wright's catalogue of them, published by Colnaghi in 1957, lists 66 prints. For anything on paper, whether it is a unique watercolour, an original print he made, or a reproduction signed in pencil is the first question, and the paper, plate mark and any blindstamp help answer it.
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.
