EXQUISITE ANTIQUE ORIGINAL PARLIAMENT / POLITICIAN PORTRAIT .......PHOTOGRAPH FRAMED BY RENOWNED NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY FRAMERS DOIG, WILSON AND WHEATLEY OF EDINBURGH .....

EXCELLENT ANTIQUE CONDITION......

Artwork measures 11.75" X 9.5" and is professionally gallery ready framed.....

Please refer to photographs for details and all questions are welcome...

DOIG, WILSON AND WHEATLEY :

Doig, Wilson & Wheatley 1895-1957. At 60 George St, Edinburgh 1857, 69 George St 1857-1861, 89 George St 1862-1875, 90 George St 1876-1957. Picture dealers, carvers and gilders, picture restorers and printsellers.

This leading Edinburgh business claimed to have been established in 1840 (The Scotsman 16 December 1912). Henry Doig (1818-1901) was a partner in the firm of Doig, McKechnie & Davies, carvers, gilders and plate glass merchants, which was formed from three separate businesses. Henry Doig, carver and gilder at 6 South St James’s St, joined with McKechnie & Davies, 69 George St and 10 Calton Hill, to form Doig, McKechnie & Davies, listed as carvers, gilders and picture liners at 69 George St and 10 Calton Hill in 1857. William McKechnie can be found as a picture framemaker at 10 Calton Hill in 1855. In 1875 Doig, McKechnie & Davies advertised a sale of surplus stock prior to removal to new premises at 90 George St (The Scotsman 14 December 1875). Henry Doig and William McKechnie, trading as Doig & McKechnie from 1885, received an appointment as picture restorers, printsellers and publishers to Queen Victoria in Edinburgh in 1889 (National Archives, LC 5/246 p.179).

Henry Doig, son of James Doig, was born in 1818 at Callander near Stirling. He was a mature student at the Trustees’ Academy for design in Edinburgh, 1845-9, to which he was admitted on the recommendation of the architect, James Gillespie Graham (National Archives of Scotland, NG 2/1/4, information from Helen Smailes). Doig can be traced in most Edinburgh censuses. In 1841 he was listed at 4 Little King St as a journeyman carver and gilder, in 1861 at 12 Queen St, as a carver and gilder, age 43, employing 18 men, 11 boys and one clerk, in 1871 at Duddingstone, as a carver and gilder, age 58, in 1881 at 90a George St, in 1891 at Portobello, as a picture restorer, age 73, widowed, and in 1901 at Portobello as a carver and gilder, age 83, by now remarried, with two great grandsons in the household, Henry and Laurence Brown, ages 20 and 17, the one apprenticed as a lithographic artist, the other as a carver and gilder.

Sole partner by 1895, Doig dissolved the firm of Doig & McKechnie, selling his stock-in-trade to Thomas Wilson and Benjamin Wheatley, who proceded to trade as Doig, Wilson & Wheatley, fine art dealers (Edinburgh Gazette 3 May 1895). The royal appointment to Queen Victoria was renewed in 1895 to Benjamin Abercromby Wheatley, Thomas Wilson and Henry Doig, trading as Doig, Wilson & Wheatley (National Archives, LC 5/246 p.273). The new partnership advertised as picture restorers, printsellers and publishers (The Scotsman 29 May 1895), also referring to ‘All Varieties of Designs in Framing’, and mentioning the removal of Wilson from 121 to 90 George St. The following month the business advertised the sale of surplus stock owing to the amalgamation of the two firms (The Scotsman 26 June 1895), with a further auction being held at the end of the year, of ‘the surplus stock of the firms of Messrs Doig & M’Kechnie and Mr Thomas Wilson’ (The Scotsman 20 November 1895). In 1897 the business opened a branch establishment at 26 Forrest Road (The Scotsman 26 July 1897).

Thomas Wilson, printseller, carver, gilder, framer and restorer, advertised his gallery at 121 George St in 1885 as ‘the largest in Edinburgh’, selling oil paintings and watercolours, claiming to have been established in 1840 (The Year’s Art, 1885-86). Benjamin Wheatley appears in the 1901 census as a fine art dealer, age 36, born in Edinburgh. The 20th-century history of the business as art dealers is not traced here.

Framing and restoration work: Henry Doig acted as Sir Joseph Noel Paton's framemaker, colourman and dealer, as is apparent from the artist’s journals (Noel-Paton 1990 pp.79, 116). The extent of Doig’s involvement is clear from entries concerning the painting, The Good Shepherd, 1876 (ex-coll. Haydon Hare), for which he not only supplied materials and framed the finished work but dealt with the sale and exhibition of the work, and acted as an intermediary with Queen Victoria who wished to have a replica (Noel-Paton 1990 pp.38-40, 98-9). The Queen went on to commission an altarpiece for Osbourne, 1884-5, with framing designed by the artist and made by Doig (the altarpiece now belongs to Anmer parish church). Doig also framed Noel Paton’s Sir Galahad, 1879 (Christie’s 11 June 1993 lot 132; repr. Noel-Paton 1990 pl.1).

Doig, McKechnie and Davies cleaned and restored 31 portraits of continental kings, princes and leaders, in the Lothian collection in 1882 (National Archives of Scotland, GD40/8/459, Lothian Muniments).

Doig, Wilson & Wheatley's label, whether as framemaker or as dealer, can be found on the plain gilt oak moulding frame on Count Girolamo Nerli’s Robert Louis Stevenson, 1892 (Scottish National Portrait Gallery). The business advertised as picture restorers, printsellers and publishers to His Majesty in 1912: ‘Pictures examined, reported on, lined and restored. Collections valued, arranged and hung… Artistic Framing…’ (Royal Scottish Academy, exh.cat., 1912). It continued to advertise 'artistic framing' (The Year’s Art 1928).