William P. Rayner Exhibition

New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

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The New York Public Library To Display Watercolor Paintings by Travel Writer William P. Rayner

Paintings depict locations in India, Cambodia, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.

The New York Public Library will display 58 watercolors by artist and travel writer William P. Rayner. The exhibition, The Watercolors of William P. Rayner, will showcase works that capture the beauty and allure of Rayner’s time abroad in North Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

As the editorial business manager of Condé Nast for 30 years Rayner traveled extensively and featured his literary and artistic pursuits in a two-book-set, titled Notes and Sketches: Travel Journals of William P. Rayner, published in 2013. He was also the author of Wise Women: Singular Lives that Helped Shape Our Century (1983). He died in 2018.

The exhibition features a selection of watercolors on loan from Rayner’s wife, Katharine Rayner, which capture iconic places such as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey; the Angkor Thom archway in Cambodia; the Temple of Amun in Karnak, Egypt; Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, India; and The Treasury in Petra, Jordan. The writer’s own words from his journal entries appear alongside his pieces to further describe and illuminate the work.

In his book Caravan: William P. Rayner Watercolors, Rayner stated:
“Traveling and painting in watercolors have always been the twin pastimes that have given me the greatest pleasure and been the most rewarding part of my adult life. To put a watercolor kit on my back, stowed with a diary and to set off for foreign lands is a pleasure for me that has never grown stale. It has been my recreation as well as vocation. It has been my life.”