Encouraged in her artistic ambitions by her parents, Annie French was trained at the Glasgow School of Art and was active as an illustrator in the first quarter of the 20th Century. She produced children’s book illustrations, designs for greeting cards - for which she was perhaps best known in her lifetime - and independent compositions in watercolour on vellum. Her work was often on a small scale and was drawn in an elaborate Art Nouveau* style that displays the particular influence of the work of Aubrey Beardsley.

As was already noted of French’s draughtsmanship in an early appraisal of her work, published in The Studio* magazine in 1905, ‘It will be noticed in these drawings that, in place of the strength and the variety o...