JAMES G. LAING

    BORN and educated in Aberdeen, Mr. James Garden Laing began life by serving a five years' apprenticeship in an architect's office in the Granite City. Other two years were spent in an architect's office at Cardiff, and two more with the late Mr. James Sellars, architect in Glasgow. Meanwhile, with a view to adopting the painter's art, he had studied in the Glasgow Art School with Mr. Greenlees, and at last, feeling able for the plunge, he laid T-square and compasses aside, and took up the palette and the brush. From the first he determined to paint only in water colour, and he has never moved from that resolve. The first paintings he exhibited in Glasgow were small pictures of "Cliffs at Aberdour" and "Fishing Village near Fraserburgh," hung at the Glasgow Institute Exhibition in 1878, and since then he has been a constant exhibitor at the Glasgow Institute, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon, and other galleries. He is also one of the most valued contributors to the displays of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water Colours, of which he is a member. Some years ago at the National Eisteddfod at Cardiff he, on the judgment of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, was awarded first prize for water-colour drawing. Among his more important picture have been "Cawdor Castle," "Sunset at Rye," "Interior of St. Maclou," Rouen, and "Where the Don runs into the Sea."
Mr. Laing has travelled much in France, Holland, Germany, Spain, and Egypt, and from each of these countries has brought home a rich harvest of work. Especially notable are his interiors of French and Dutch churches, the Corporation of Glasgow having purchased one of the best of these for their permanent collection at Kelvingrove.

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