Lot 20: AR Sir William Oliphant Hutchison PRSA RP (1889-1970) Portrait of Her

AR Sir William Oliphant Hutchison PRSA RP (1889-1970)
Portrait of Her Majesty the Queen
oil on canvas, in a carved giltwood frame surmounted by a coronet
254 x 156.2 cm. (100 x 61 1/2 in.)


Provenance
Bramshill House Police Training College, Hampshire
Private Collection
Hutchison was one of the most sought-after portrait painters of his
day, producing several Royal portraits circa 1956. His grand-daughter
recalls that he spent two weeks at Buckingham Palace, making life
studies, which he then worked up in his studios in Eglinton Crescent,
in Edinburgh. There are other portraits of the Queen in the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery, and in the collections of the B.B.C. and the
Merchants’ Company, Edinburgh. He also painted Prince Phillip, with
works held by the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, and the
U.K. Defence Academy.
Hutchison succeeded another Scot, Sir James Gunn, as one of the
principal society portraitists in Britain. He exhibited 52 works at the
Royal Academy between 1905 and 1968, immortalising everyone from
senior politicians to artistocrats, College Masters and military figures.
Hutchison was an Honoraray Royal Academician, President of the
Royal Society of Portrait Painters until his death, and was Knighted in
1953.
Hutchison trained in Paris, and in Edinburgh under Glasgow Boy EA
Walton whose daughter he married, and formed the Edinburgh Group
in 1912. He moved to London in 1922, returning north when he was
made Director of Glasgow School of Art in 1933.