Alexander William Wellwood Rattray 1849-1902 was the son of a Glasgow minister and was educated at Glasgow University and Glasgow School of Art, studying under Robert Greenlees and in Paris, with Damoye and Daubigny.

He was a landscape, coastal and flower painter and watercolourist. He favoured restrained tones and his technique has been described as clumsy but expressive.

He painted mainly in the Highlands, the East coast of Scotland and on the Mull of Kintyre.

He was an active exhibitor, showing 23 works at The Royal Academy in London, 2 at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water colours and also exhibited at Grosvenor Gallery, New English Art Club (becoming a member in 1887) and Dowdeswell Galleries.

He also exhibited at the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Manchester City Art Gallery.

In Scotland, he exhibited 66 works at the Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Hibernian Academy and Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. In 1885 he joined the membership of Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours and he became an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1896.

He received honorable mention at the Paris Salon and Paris International Exhibition in 1889 for his Salmon Stream and Ferry, Loch Ranza.

Rattray was among those Glasgow painters who in 1891 appended their names to a list requesting that the Corporation of Glasgow buy Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle

References:

https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/biog/?bid=Ratt_W&initial=

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Johnson, J., and A. 

Gruetzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940 Woodbridge, 1980;

McEwan, Peter J. M., Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Woodbridge, 1994.