William Rainey

William Rainey RI RBA ROI (21 July 1852 – 24 January 1936) was a British artist and illustrator.

He was the third of eight children[note 1] of the distinguished anatomist and teacher George Rainey (1801 – 16 November 1884)[1] and Martha Dee, a farmer's daughter (c. 1827 – 27 May 1905).

[2] Rainey was originally intended for a career at sea, but his father, who had himself run away from an early apprenticeship,[3] allowed him instead to study at the South Kensington School of Art.

Raines was walking on Grand Parade on the sea-front promenade at Eastborne on 24 January 1935 when he collapsed and died before a doctor could be called.

[16] Rainey won medals for watercolours both the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1900 Paris Exhibition.

[17] Rainey was still exhibiting in the 1930s,[18][19] even though by now he has moved on to the retired list of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours,[18] being an honorary member from 1930.

[39] Pennell also listed Rainey among those artists whose names, like their works, are household words and who have a power of rendering events of the day in a fashion unequalled elsewhere.

She also noted that Thorpe considered him a great but unrecognised illustrator who was ‘never conventional in his designs, had a fine sense of character, and maintained the interest throughout the whole of the drawing.

[17] Newbolt noted that Rainey He had a long and successful career as a book illustrator, which continued right up to the end of his life.