Sir George Reid RSA 1841-1913

Sir George Reid PPRSA was born on 31st October 1841 in Aberdeen. He showed his leanings towards art early, and his ability with the pencil led to his being apprenticed at the age of thirteen with a firm of lithographers practising in Aberdeen. When Reid entered as a student at the Trustees' Academy in the Spring of 1862, he was already an accomplished craftsman.

His early works mainly consisted of landscapes, with occasional interior or figure subjects in the mix. However, in 1868 his portrait of George Macdonald attracted universal admiration, and from then until the close of his working life, George Reid was most widely known as a portrait painter. His sitters included most of the eminent Scotsmen of that generation and the next.