The New York Public Library presents an exhibition of over 50 works by watercolorist and travel writer William P. Rayner (1929–2018). During his three-decade career as editorial business manager at Condé Nast, and on trips with family and friends, Rayner trekked across Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and North Africa. He assiduously kept notes during these journeys, as well as drawings, postcards, clippings, and ephemera, in his diaries and travel journals. Sketching and painting began as a way of recording quickly his immediate impressions of a place, mostly as an aide for his writing, but watercolors eventually became Rayner’s pastime and passion.
“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.”
