Jane Watts

Jane Watts born Jane Waldie (1793–1826) was a British artist and author born to a Scottish and Northumbrian family. Life Jane Waldie was born in 1793, the daughter of George and Ann (born Ormston) Waldie, variously of Hendersyde Park, Roxburghshire; Kingswood, Northumberland; and Forth House, Newcastle upon Tyne. Her elder sister, Charlotte Anne Eaton, was also a writer and artist. Her accomplishments - which appear to have been "astonishing skill in painting" - were sufficiently noted to gain her a place in Men of Mark 'twixt Tyne and Tweed, an 1895 three volume set of biographies of local worthies in which she is one of only two woman featured; and an extended entry in The Annual Biography and Obituary for 1827. From a young age, Waldie painted pictures of local scenery. She was largely self-taught, receiving a few lessons from a Kelso artist, and learning to mix colours from a commercial sign-writer. She studied for three months under Alexander Nasmyth, albeit her obituary makes clear that his instruction was unhelpful. The Dictionary of National Biography asserts that the figures in three or four of her paintings were by Sir Robert Ker Porter, but she exhibited in her own name at Somerset House in 1819 a painting titled The Temple at Pæstum. Her obituary speaks of her having completed 40 or 50 oil paintings, and in addition, watercolours and pencil architectural drawings.