Gertrude des ClayesRCA (1879 – 23 August 1949) was a Scottish-born artist who lived in England and Quebec, Canada. Des Clayes was best known as a portrait painter.[1][2]
She was born in Aberdeen and studied at the Bushey School of Art and at the Académie Julian in Paris with Tony Robert-Fleury and Jules Lefebvre. She lived in London from 1906 to 1912 and received a medal from the French Salon in 1909. In 1911, she became a member of the National Portrait Society (founded in 1910).[3] Des Clayes moved to Montreal in 1912. In 1914, she was elected an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[4] One of her portraits appeared in The Fine Arts in Canada (1925) by Newton MacTavish. She returned to England in 1936.[2]
Children gathering Bluebells
Des Clayes created a portrait of railway entrepreneur Sir William Mackenzie's mother, Mary, using photographs taken of Mary's sisters and by studying Mary's daughters and granddaughters; no photographs were available of Mary Mackenzie herself who had died 27 years before des Clayes was born.[5]
