Notable - Highlights from the year

Notable

highlights from the yeaR

Notable highlights from the year 23 June - 15 July 2017

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

6 Dundas Street • Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0)131 557 4050 • www.fasedinburgh.com

William Gouw Ferguson 1632/33-after 1695

A pigeon, kingfisher, woodpecker and other birds with hunting paraphernalia oil on canvas • 24 ½ x 20 ½ inches Provenance: Property of a Dutch noble family literature: F G Meijer, “Virtuosity, prosperity and dreamed trophies: Dutch still life with dead animals between 1600 and 1800” in Of Beauty and Death: Still Life from the Renaissance to the Modern, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Heidelberg/Berlin, 2011, p. 64 Ferguson is a peripatetic and slightly elusive figure in the history of Scottish art. As his name conveys, he was either born in Scotland or was of Dutch-inflected Scots lineage – his father, perhaps, a merchant or a soldier. He became recognised as a painter and citizen of the Netherlands in 1648 when he was received as a master by the Utrecht Guild of St Luke. Ferguson worked in Utrecht, the Hague and Amsterdam, visited London and also visited Italy in 1679. This painting is typical of the artist and similar examples can be found in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Hermitage, St Petersberg and the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

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Alexander Nasmyth hrsa 1758-1840

Barskimming Bridge oil on canvas • 19 x 27 ½ inches Literature: Patricia R. Andrew, ‘The Bridge Behind Burns’, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, Vol. 16, 2011-2012, pp.10-15 Alexander Nasmyth is best known today as a landscape painter, so much so that the other achievements of his varied career have largely disappeared from public consciousness. ln addition to being a painter, he was also a theatre designer, an architect and landscape designer, a scientist and engineer and an influential teacher.

His landscapes, regarded even in his day as his most significant contribution to painting in Scotland, quickly found favour, and gave him freedom to pursue other work. His engineering designs were innovative and ahead of their time. Like many people in the 18th century, Nasmyth was enthusiastic about the benefits that technological developments could bring. He saw no conflict between technology and natural beauty in landscape painting, and he often included industrial features in works.

Barskimming bridge, near Mauchline, spans the River Ayr and leads to Old Barskimming house, visible in the picture. The house was owned by the brother of Nasmyth’s most important patron, Sir Patrick Miller. The design of the bridge is comparable to Nasmyth’s own designs although it may not have been built by him. The image was the basis for an engraving, suggesting that the artist was particularly pleased with it. There is also a watercolour of the same.

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Alexander Carse 1770-1843

The Miller of Drone c.1820; 1888 exhibition label verso oil on panel • 20 ½ x 28 inches Provenance: Mr John Pegg, London; private collection, Spain Exhibited: Grosvenor Gallery, Winter Exhibition 1888, No. 130 (as ‘The Drunken Farrier’ by Sir David Wilkie), loaned by John Pegg Better known as a popular Scottish strathspey composed by either Nathaniel Gow (1763-1831) or his father Niel (1727-1807), there are also three versions of a bawdy song called ‘Miller of Drone’ originating from northeast of Scotland. This oil on panel shows Carse’s skills at their height. Pinned to the wall by the window is a song sheet with the very finest writing noting the title of the picture and, below it, scratched into the plaster, a rudimentary stickman and woman; one of the panes of glass misses its top right corner and, with acute observation, Carse has imperceptibly dirtied the pane to allow a chink of clear blue sky unhindered. The table where the action is focused hosts a raucous group of men, lead by the miller, gathered around a punch bowl; a bowl of sugar lumps and tongs lie ready to sweeten the liquour. A basket of garden produce, gleaming brassware, embers from a pipe all display Carse’s range.

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Well it’s easy, queasy, saft and easy Ay, the mill gae’d on O’ a’ the millers e’er I saw There’s nane like him o’ Dron There was a miller lived in Dron And he was fed on beef and brose Wi’ sturdy limbs and shoulders broad As you may well suppose The miller was a sturdy loon That ever hung a stone And he’s ta’en his suit a’ different ways As the wives kent weel at Dron Noo the lassie she gae’d tae the mill Wi’ corn upon her heid Sayin’, Miller, would your stones still work For we are oot o’ breid He took this fair maid in his arms And in motion put his stones And clink and clank then went the mill Wi’ a’ the grind o’ Dron

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James Howe 1780-1836

All Hallow’s Fair on Calton Hill signed oil on canvas • 47 ½ x 88 inches provenance: Private collection, Edinburgh, and thence to John Swan and Son Ltd since 1956 The last All Hallow’s fair was held at Calton Hill in 1813 and, in this impressive sweep of Edinburgh’s historic townscape, Howe has cited a representation of recent history in an area that was undergoing rapid development. No doubt he had good pictorial reasons for doing so, but the number of new buildings – the Nelson Monument (1807-16), Governor’s House (1815-17) and St Johns’s Church (1815-18) amongst others – is striking. A certain degree of creative imagination over actual topography allowed Howe to bring in various of Edinburgh’s most notable features: Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags would only be visible by turning 180 degrees; St John’s church has been placed half way down Princes Street and placed where the Royal Institution would begin construction in 1822. However, the panorama was of the moment. Invented in Edinburgh by Robert Barker in 1792, panoramas were housed in rotundas which were found in many of Europe’s capital cities. Mid-way on the Mound and visible only in a raking light is a pentiment of Edinburgh’s rotunda. It is probable that Howe’s first panoramic work was completed in 1815 – a work covering 21 square metres depicting the Battle of Waterloo. The painting was destined for public display in a special building in York Place, Edinburgh, and proved to be such a success that he swiftly went on to a second panorama, the Battle of Quatre Bras. Large-scale and inclusive compositions were, perhaps, at the forefront of Howe’s designs at this time.

The fair brought livestock to the capital in huge numbers – between five and ten thousand - driven from Lowlands and Highlands. Tents were struck to house hostels and the scene throngs with human and animal life. They were lively affairs and it wasn’t unusual for the Town Guard to be deployed to stop public disorder, in particular the town’s youth creating stampedes. It was likely for this reason, and the poor accessibility to Calton Hill, that the fair was moved to more appropriate surroundings at Gorgie and the Pentlands.

Although a painter of less technical sophistication than such contemporaries as Alexander Carse and Alexander Fraser, Howe’s work has all the vitality and authenticity of a scene understood and experienced by the artist.

Tremendous charm eminates from all the players, human and animal alike.

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Sir William Quiller Orchardson ra hrsa 1832-1910 Ophelia oil on canvas • 40 x 50 ½ inches Provenance: Brian Sewell Exhibited: Royal Academy, London, 1874, no.380 Literature: Little, The Life and Work of William Q. Orchardson, R.A., London, 1897, p. 21; Gray, The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson, London, 1930, p. 12; Rhodes, Kimberley. Ophelia and Victorian visual culture: representing body politics in the nineteenth century, Ashgate, Hampshire, 2008, pp. 111-113 The loose, painterly style and mournful characterisation of Ophelia was greatly criticised at the time of its exhibition in 1874. Not only was Ophelia’s demeanour felt to be inappropriate – ‘a slatternly female, fare advanced in phthisis and never well-favoured, in dirty clothes, and with a dirtier face’ – but also his technique which was compared to a sketch and not a finished work of art. A similar prejudice was encountered in the critical reception of John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, which also challenged critics to re-examine their expectations for the depiction of such a famous literary heroine.

With the benefit of time, however, we can appreciate Orchardson’s progressive technique, so admired by his contemporary Degas. Orchardson’s Ophelia is as striking for her beauty and ghost-like attitude as the dark, enclosed surroundings of the woodland she finds herself: a projection of her psychological state. Flowers, as described by Queen Gertrude in Hamlet (Act IV, Scene VII), tumble down the heroine’s dress. In a picture that majors on tonal qualities – his palette was likened to ‘the back of an old tapestry’ - the flower’s colourful interlude only serve to heighten Ophelia’s loosening grip on life.

There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them

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Joseph Farquharson ra 1846-1935

The Rosy Flush of Dawn signed oil on canvas • 39 ½ x 59 inches Provenance: Private collection, Hong Kong Joseph Farquharson was renowned for his snowscapes and countryside scenes. He travelled as far afield as Egypt; however, many of his paintings depict the rigours of his native Scotland, often in the winter. Though remarkably realistic, Farquharsons paintings are highly poetic and often take their titles from poems by Milton and Shakespeare. In particular, he was adept at capturing the warmth and light of sun rises and twilight.

Farquharson combined a career as a painter with his inherited role as laird of Finzean (Aberdeenshire). At Finzean he adapted French plein-air techniques to the Scottish climate. He designed a painting hut on wheels, fitted with large windows and a stove. From this hut, he painted the wooded landscapes surrounding the estate. Farquharson’s considerable commercial success was based on the snow scenes he exhibited almost annually at the Royal Academy from 1894 until 1925, earning him the nickname ‘Frozen Mutton Farquharson’.

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Arthur Melville arsa rsw 1855-1904

Mosul at Dawn signed watercolour • 12 Ÿ x 18 Ÿ inches This watercolour is likely to have been executed in 1888 along with another similar work, Arabs returning from a raid, Mosul, 1888 (private collection). Both watercolours show riders, identified by their scarlet banner, crossing the Euphrates in the shadow of the walled city. The skyline of mosques and minarets is set against a sun not yet risen.

It is possible that the adventure stories and travel writing of an earlier generation lured Melville to more remote lands than his less daring contempories. He passed through Mosul enroute to Constantinople in May 1882. It was a treacherous journey on horseback, during which the artist was pursued by bandits, dodged bullets and endured a spell in prison. Melville revisited his watercolours of Cairo, Baghdad and all places inbetween throughout the 1880s and 90s. His technique is something to marvel at. Apparently simple, it is in fact composed of layer upon layer of watercolour applied and removed; scuffed paper, invisible to the naked eye, deepens the effect, creating body. The more one looks, the more the watercolour reveals.

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James Whitelaw Hamilton rsa rsw 1860-1932

Autumn Reverie signed and dated 95; inscribed on label verso oil on canvas • 38 ¼ x 60 ½ inches Provenance: Private collection, Italy; Robert McIndoe, Glasgow Exhibited: The Munich Secession, Munich 1895; The Fine Art Society London, 1988 Not surprisingly, given Helensburgh’s reputation as a centre for artists, Whitelaw Hamilton became friends with the Glasgow Boys. In 1884, he joined Guthrie, Henry, Crawhall and Melville at Cockburnspath, a village in Berwickshire lying between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh. For much of Whitelaw Hamilton’s life, it appeared that his work was appreciated more abroad than in his own country: he exhibited there as often as he did at home. This was highlighted when he became a member of the Munich Secession and won a gold medal at the Munich International Exhibition in 1897, possibly for the picture illustrated here. The Munich Secession was an association of visual artists who broke away from the mainstream Munich Artists’ Association in 1892, to promote and defend their art in the face of what they considered official paternalism and its conservative policies. They acted as a form of cooperative, using their influence to assure their economic survival and obtain commissions.

Autumn Reverie looks to the French Realists for its subject but also owes something to the French Symbolists for the stylisation of the composition. The trees that intersect the fore, middle and farground across a broad landscape almost create a pattern but also serve to draw the eye from wooded copse to the horizon. From the shade of the trees the girl looks out to the Berwickshire coastline in a bucolic scene lit by autumn’s crisp, clear light.

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William Stewart MacGeorge rsa 1861-1931

The Harbour, Kirkcudbright signed; indistinctly inscribed on original labels verso oil on canvas • 22 x 30 ½ inches Provenance: Doig, Wilson, & Wheatley, Edinburgh Born in Castle Douglas, MacGeorge was a Kirkcudbright School artist and significant part of an artist’s colony that stretched across a century from 1850 to 1950. He was a painter of children and fisher folk, on the shores of the Solway or by the River Dee. Although his friendship with Hornel (which was later to end) and the latter’s love for vivid colours and loose brushstrokes influenced his late paintings, MacGeorge remained the most naturalistic painter of the Kirkcudbright School. In 1886 MacGeorge was involved in forming the Kirkcudbright Fine Art Association. John Faed was the first president and their inaugural exhibition took place in September 1887.

MacGeorge’s most successful work was simple and serene. Executed in low tones and, unlike his contemporaries Hornel and Henry, no decorative abstraction. In this respect his work is akin to the painting of Pont Aven and contemporary French Symbolism.

The eighteenth century gable end of the Harbour cottage sits in the centre of this composition. Unknown to MacGeorge this was to take a central role to the next chapter of the Kirkcudbright artists. Saved from dilapidation and ruin, a group of artists lead by Charles Oppenheimer raised funds to create the Kirkcudbright Harbour Cottage Art Gallery. Officially opened on 8th September 1957 with an exhibition entitled “Special Loan Exhibition of Pictures by Deceased Artists connected with Kirkcudbright” it included a work by MacGeorge. The Harbour Cottage Gallery celebrates its 60th anniversary later this year and we are pleased to be exhibiting a group of Galloway paintings there between 12-27 August.

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Sir David Young Cameron ra rsa hrsw re 1865-1945

The Eternal Hills, Loch Tarff c.1930; signed oil on canvas • 20 ¼ x 40 inches Provenance: Frost & Reed, Bristol; Collection of Ian MacNicol Exhibited: Royal Glasgow Institute, Glasgow, 1944, no.46 Loch Tarff is set high on the south side of Loch Ness, not far from Fort Augustus. A golden Beinn A’Bhachaid presides over the scene. Cameron was interested in portraying the beauty, spirit and grandeur of the Highlands. He was also a romantic, and had a real sense of connection not only to the landscape, but to its history and literature.

Panoramic views of the hills of Argyll, Perthshire and further north were Cameron’s principal subject and inspiration. His style was individual and altered little during his life. Palette was the only element that changed quite radically: from sober and muted greys and browns in the first decade of the twentieth century to vivid blues, reds and gold in the 1930s. From the beginning of his painting career, however, he eliminated extraneous detail, which gave his landscapes an ascetic splendour and drama. Cameron’s attitude to colour changed in 1922, during a period spent recuperating from a heart attack in the south of France. After his crisis of health, he came to see light and colour in a way he had not done before. On his return to Scotland, he filled his pictures with a glowing, vibrant palette.

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Pat Douthwaite 1934-2002

Teddy Boys 1960, signed; signed and titled verso mixed media on board • 48 x 58 inches Provenance: The Redfern Gallery, London where sold to C J Hay-Smith, 4.2.60; incomplete label verso ‘John Hutton, British Council, Albion House, New Oxford Street, London WC1’ Exhibited: The Redfern Gallery, London, 13 January-12 February 1960; British Council Teddy Boys was one of four works by Douthwaite exhibited in the group show Ten Younger English Artists at The Redfern Gallery in 1960. The exhibition took place early in her artistic career, at a time when she was first establishing her practice of painting with enamel oils on board - the medium she would favour into the 1970s. The artists represented in this exhibition were linked by the esteem they held for the French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet, whose influence is apparent in this work.

Douthwaite had begun to seriously pursue art two years earlier, having previously painted occasionally and focused more on dance and theatre. She studied mime and modern dance with Margaret Morris, whose husband, J. D. Fergusson, encouraged her to paint. This influence apart, she was self-taught. At this time she moved from her native Glasgow to Essex, having previously met the painter William Crozier. In Essex and at exhibitions in London she acquainted herself with a number of artists who would influence both her life and artistic practice, including Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, and Paul Hogarth, whom she would marry in 1963.

Alongside the Teddy Boy style which abounded in London in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the title of this work may also make reference a portrait of Hogarth that Douthwaite painted in this period: Hogey Bear.

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John Byrne rsa b.1940

Knocking on Heaven’s Door 2017; signed oil on panel • 30 x 24 inches Provenance: The artist’s studio Not driven by narcissism but the problem of the elusive self, Byrne has long continued to examine himself. There is physical truth and sometimes caricature in his self portraits, but what he sees looking back at him we, the viewer, are never given to understand. Nor perhaps is the artist. The face has become mask-like by dint of our familiarity with his finely-cultivated and hirsute visage, crooked nose and hooded eyes. But this intimacy only serves to distract us from what is really staring back.

Byrne’s titles often reference music of the 60s and Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door does that. But pop culture collides with old world momento mori symbolism with a skeleton, ubiquitous ciggie in hand, leaning casually against the artist’s temple.

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Will Maclean rsa b.1941

Will Maclean has a long history with the sea and maritime culture. From the age of sixteen he worked as a midshipman for three years before embarking on evening classes at Edinburgh College of Art and, thereafter, being accepted at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. Following this, he worked again as a ring net fisherman before transforming his experiences at sea into the Ring-Net Project, over 400 drawings which are now in the permanent collection of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. His other influence is the cultural history of Scotland, particularly Highland tradition and the hardships of the clearances. Accordingly, much of Maclean’s art ties together his interests in the sea, tradition, folklore and history.

His tactile, seemingly organic mixed media constructions seem as much an artifact of a shared history as an artistic representation thereof. Rather than expressly lay out a narrative, Maclean crafts his artworks with symbolism and semi-abstracted form. Priest’s Box, from 1982, forms an imaginary tool kit for a travelling Bronze Age priest, with equipment for the alignment of standing stones, a megalithic yard length of cord contained in a bone tube to set straight lines, and model standing stones.

Metamorphic Bird titled and dated 1977 on canvas verso and label verso mixed media construction • 21 ½ x 25 inches Provenance: Leinster Fine Art, London; private collection, USA Literature: Macmillan, Symbols of Survival: The Art of Will Maclean, Edinburgh, 1992, pg. 113

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The Drowning signed, titled and dated 1983 on bottom wood construction • 28 x 8 ¼ x 8 inches Provenance: Leinster Fine Art, London; private collection, USA Exhibited: Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Gallery, Will Maclean – Constructions & Drawings, 1984 Literature: Macmillan, Symbols of Survival: The Art of Will Maclean, Edinburgh, 1992, pg. 114

Icon for a Fisherman signed and dated ’78; signed titled and dated 78 on label verso mixed media construction • 24 x 24 inches Provenance: Private collection, USA Literature: Macmillan, Symbols of Survival: The Art of Will Maclean, Edinburgh, 1992, pp. 46, 51, 113

Priest’s Box 1982

mixed media construction • 17 x 14 x 14 inches

Provenance: Leinster Fine Art, London; private collection, USA Exhibited: Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Gallery, Will Maclean – Constructions & Drawings, 1984 Literature: Macmillan, Symbols of Survival: The Art of Will Maclean, Edinburgh, 1992, pp. 47, 52, 113

Tim Pomeroy b.1957

Mimosa chinese granite • 23 ½ inches diameter Provenance: The artist’s studio Based on Northern European archaeology, natural history and the everyday designed world, Pomeroy’s sculpture have meditative and contemplative qualities. While the objects are made in traditional sculptural materials of stone, yew, bog oak and copper, the forms, shapes and ideas are contemporary. Mimosa is inspired by the flower pods of plants in the Mimosa genus. It brings together completely opposite concepts: the lightness and the feather-like quality of the Mimosa pods combined with the massive bulk of the granite stone.

Tim Pomeroy was born in Hamilton in 1957. He attended Gray’s School of Art from 1976-81 and has worked as a full-time artist since 1983. He lives on the Isle of Arran.

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Published by The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh for the exhibition

Notable

highlights from the year held at 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh from 23 June to 15 July 2017

isbn 978-1-907052-86-6 Catalogue © The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

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Front cover: Arthur Melville, Mosul at Dawn

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

6 Dundas Street • Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0)131 557 4050 • www.fasedinburgh.com

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh