Irving - William Irving (1866 - 1943)

William Irving (1866 - 1943). Portrait, landscape and genre painter in oil and watercolour. Born in Ainstable Cumbria the son of a farmer, Irving moved to Tyneside in his infancy later attending the Newcastle School of Art under William Cosens Way. After college he joined the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle as an illustratOr a post he held for many years while building up a reputation as a portrait painter. Irving was also a member of the Bewick Club where he exhibited regularly his first important landscape with figures The End of the Season was seen in 1891. He went on to exhibit at the Royal Academy from 1898 to 1906 after which his attention were drawn to exhibitions coser to home at the Laing gallery and  the Artists of Northumbria. He furthered his studies at the Academie Julian in Paris in 1905 before returning to the north east. His most famous picture The Blaydon Races  was such a success when displayed in an art dealers window in Newcastle that it attracted such a large crowd that the police asked the manger to draw the blinds. The Blaydon races was sold in 2002 to the Tyne and Wear museums for £110,000 and can be seen at the Shipley Art Gallery.