The Seven Dyals Treasure (Original)

Artist: Paul Rainer
Medium: Watercolour on Board
Size: 13" x 9" (330mm x 240mm)
Date: 1967
Code: Rainer7Dyals

This is the unique original Watercolour painting by Paul Rainer.

There is a column in Weybridge Surrey dedicated to Catherine, Duchess of York, who lived in the town for many years.

However the column had it's origins in London. It was designed by Sir Edward Pierce, a former assistant to Sir Christopher Wren. It's original home was the junction of seven streets in the Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. It was capped by a hexagonal stone faced with six sun dials. It became known as the Seven Dyals column.

Towards the end of the Eighteenth Century word began to spread that there was treasure buried underneath it. Our painting by Paul Rainer shows the column being taken to pieces. For some time the sun dial section was used as a mounting block outside the Ship Inn in Weybridge before being reassembled and a cornet added to honour the Duchess of York in 1820.

From Look and Learn #315 27 January 1968.

• Artist Biography
  Paul Rainer (Flourished 1950s and 1960s)
  Paul Rainer, an illustrator about whom not much is known. We know he was active in the 1950s in Everybody's Magazine, and in the 1960s contributed to both Bible Story and Look and Learn.
  
  He illustrated a couple of series in Look and Learn including 'People and Plants' in 1966, the excellent 'Who Said...?' in 1967 and various others in 1968-69. Before that, he was one of the regular illustrators for Bible Story, illustrating 'The Story of the Life of Jesus' (1964).