Sir William Russell Flint (Edinburgh 1880 - London 1969)

Sir William Russell Flint’s nubile young ladies have come to epitomise the voluptuous glamour of the early decades of the twentieth century. Like Hollywood screen goddesses or fashion models, they often strut, pose or recline in various attitudes of sensual abandon. This cool and tranquil composition depicts a woman tentatively wading into the shallows, her arms held away from her body for balance and her knees bent in hesitation as the icy blue waters ripple around her. She appears entirely un-self conscious about her nakedness and absorbed in a private exploration of her surroundings. The water’s surface is generally smooth and calm and framed on one edge by a rough wall of rocks, suggesting that this is a sheltered pool. The feeling of intimacy is heightened by the secluded nature of the setting and the absence of other figures.

Flint studied at the Royal Institute of Art, Edinburgh and subsequently moved to London taking up freelance illustration commissions for various magazines and publishers. He secured his artistic reputation with watercolour landscapes of the British Isles and France, Italy and Spain with many of the latter including references to local customs. On returning to his native Scotland after the Great War, Flint continued to work as a freelance artist and became one of the most sought after artists of his day. Whilst his work won immediate favour with amateur collectors, he was also rapidly recognised by societies including the Royal Society of Oil Painters to which he was elected in 1912. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1917, and served as President from 1936-56. Knighted in 1947 he was accorded a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1962, the highest distinction that an artist can achieve during his lifetime. Bury describes how ‘in the infinite variety of temperament, vision, technique, achievement despair and triumph recorded in the long history of art, Sir William Russell Flint takes a unique place. At its best, his work is perfect and without criticism’.