Stansmore Richmond Leslie Dean (Scottish 1866–1944) has not benefited from the same reappraisal as Bessie MacNicol, who was her peer and a fellow student at the Glasgow School of Art. As such, when Dean’s paintings appear sporadically on the market, it is an intriguing and pleasing discovery for many collectors. Today her work is situated canonically in the (retrospectively titled) group ‘The Glasgow Girls’.
Dean was born in Glasgow in 1866, the daughter of the artist and master engraver Alexander Davidson Dean. Inheriting her father’s talent, she attended the Glasgow School of Art alongside MacNicol, as well as David Gauld and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. An anecdote from 1908 reveals as much about the fervency of Dean’s admiration for Mackintosh, as it does about the strength of her character: Dean was convenor of the Decoration Committee of the Society of Lady Artists’ Club in Glasgow, charged with supervising alterations to their Clubhouse at 5 Blythswood Square. She put up a good fight to have Mackintosh take on the job, but was ultimately overruled by the Council. Clearly a forceful and principled individual, Dean promptly resigned in protest.
Further evidence of her wilful spirit was her passion for travel. She was the first female artist to win the Haldane Travelling Scholarship bursary, which she used to travel to Paris to study with Gustave Courtois at the Académie Colarossi. Dean would paint in Europe most summers, notably the South of France, Brittany and Holland. She and her husband, the artist Robert Macaulay Stevenson, would eventually live in France for several years. They made a home in Montreuil-sur-Mer between the years 1910 and 1926, during which time they attended the needs of soldiers making their way to The Front.
After the War, the couple relocated to Kircudbright, where they had access to the studio of Jessie M. King. In 1944 Dean, whose art practice had been halted by failing sight in her later years, died in Castle Douglas.
