After Charles Lees RSA GRAND MATCH AT GOLF AN EXTR

After Charles Lees RSA GRAND MATCH AT GOLF AN EXTREMELY RARE SIGNED PROOF IMPRESSION BEFORE PRINTED WITH TITLE: mixed method engraving by Charles E. Wagstaffe, signed in Pencil by Lees and titled as above, printed on laid india paper, framed & glazed, backboard with the label of the publisher T. Alexander Hill, Artists' Colourman to the Royal Scottish Academy, 12 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, 53 by 86cm., 21 by 34in.; sold with a modern key plate to the engraving, framed & glazed (2) This print is believed to have been the first impression from the plate, signed and titled in pencil by Charles Lees and then presented to the engraver Charles E. Wagstaffe (born 1808). Charles Lees was born in 1800 in Cupar, Fifeshire, and began his artistic career as a pupil of the eminent Edinburgh portraitist Sir Henry Raeburn. With the exception of six months spent in Rome, Lees spent his entire working life in Edinburgh from an address at 19 Scotland Street. He established a fine reputation as a portrait painter and was elected a Royal Scottish Academician in 1830 and later became the Academy's Treasurer. From the 1840's Lees began specialising in sporting and recreational subjects. His oil painting of the golfers' grand match at St Andrews in 1841 is the most famous golfing work of art in the world and is owned by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The match was between Sir David Baird and Sir Ralph Anstruther on one side and Major Playfair and John Campbell of Glensaddell on the other Charles Lees died in 1880.