who, though chiefly concerned with oil painting, showed his rarest
artistic achievements in water-colour landscapes. To him and Bough the
credit is due for creating a greater interest in that medium and branch
of art than it had hitherto enjoyed. Nevertheless the various
exhibitions gave but scanty appreciation to the water-colour painters.
In their organizers’ minds the medium employed seemed to be rated higher
than a work of art, despite water-colour being the one almost entirely
employed by the supreme artists of China and Japan. Works in it were
exhibitionally a little less than ignored, with the result that in
Glasgow on December 21, 1877, ten enthusiasts held the first preliminary
meeting of the now important Royal Scottish Society of Painters in
Water-Colours. The only member of that faithful gathering now living is
the Society’s present Vice-President, A. K. Brown, R.S.A. It was not,
however, until two months later that the Society was definitely formed,
due to the proposition of Sir Francis Powell and seconded by William
McTaggart, Powell being elected its first president and the virile Sam
Bough vice-president on March 4, 1878. In November of the same year the
new Society held its first exhibition in which 172 pictures were shown;
and in February 1888, as the only representative art body of its kind in
Scotland, it was empowered to use the prefix “Royal.” Its present
membership numbers seventy-nine, of which eight are honorary, under the
presidency of E. A. Walton, R.S.A. That the Society has been the means
of promoting a wider public interest in water-colour painting in
Scotland has been clearly evinced, and of recent years its exhibitions
(now and again not entirely confined to the work of its members) have
unquestionably stimulated a general interest in the art. Yet the day
seems still far off when a more united appreciation will be based on a
picture as a work of art, regardless of the value placed upon the medium
in which it is produced.
In comparison with the old water-colourists’ slightly tinted drawings, p
the chief elements most markedly notable in the modern development are
the more extensively varied methods employed, aided considerably by the
scientifically discovered greater range and assured permanency of
pigments and materials. Technically, I think, the art of painting is
closely allied to the art of acting; the actor utilizes voice and
make-up according to the emotions and character he wishes to express, in
the same way that the painter’s subject and thought to be fully
indicated call for a process and technique affinitive with them. Within
recent years it became the fashion amongst water-colour artists to
strain the medium beyond its limited powers, the result being heavily
framed works competing in a feeble way with oils, and subjects that
would certainly have been better rendered artistically had this medium
been employed.
With the exception of the work of De Wint and Cox, the greatest
influence recognizable in the work of many of the Scottish
water-colourists is of Dutch origin and easily traced to such masters as
Anton Mauve, Josef Israëls, Bosboom and the Maris brothers; so much so
in fact that with certain artists it has been difficult to discern the
difference between many of their own paintings and those of the men by
whom they were so obviously inspired. The method employed was as
follows: after the drawing had been roughly suggested, the paper was
submitted to a tubbing and scrubbing, so that the colour ate its way in
until finally more direct and stronger touches were applied, desired
lighter portions being wiped out while wet, or slicked up with a little
body-colour. The method, though losing much that is inherently beautiful
in water-colour, is nevertheless one which most aptly suggests certain
phases of landscape dealing with poetic sentiment and mystery.
The one perfect artist in Scotland who most originally adopted the
process was Arthur Melville (1855-1904). What good there was in it he
certainly extracted; Melville, too, seldom resorted to the aid of
body-colour. I have known him, if unsatisfied with any portion of his
painting, to deliberately cut it out and dexterously insert a fresh
piece of paper, and much trouble and experience went to bring about the
apparent ease with which his work appears to have been done.
Another method extremely popular with some artists, though perhaps
practised more on the Continent, was the almost entire use of
body-colour on a tinted ground, a method which brings water-colour
painting into a closer relation to that of oils. In other than capable
hands it has a tendency to lack freshness, giving an opaque and chalky
quality to the work. But when used by a few artists in this country who
have fully realized its possibilities and limitations, some excellent
results have been achieved, pre-eminent amongst them being those by the
Newcastle artist, Joseph Crawhall, by whom his many Scottish associates
were inspired to a remarkable degree. His paintings, principally of
birds and animal life, in the various exhibitions were always
outstanding, and to-day there is little if any work of this character
being done that can surpass it.
Water-colour, however, used direct without the assistance of scrubbing,
scraping and body-colour shows without question the medium at its best.
As a process used in what is termed the purist’s method, there certainly
is no other that can compete with it for affinitive landscapes, and what
has been done even experimentally in it, by other than water-colour
artists, represents, perhaps, the finest examples of genuine art they
have left us. With the exception of the short-lived George Manson
(1850-1876), Tom Scott, R.S.A., R. B. Nisbet, R.S.A., and Ewen Geddes,
R.S.W., one might safely say that all the Scottish water-colourists are
equally conversant with oils, though in recent years Nisbet has been
devoting much of his time to the latter medium.
Perhaps the first artist in Scotland to realize the brilliancy of Nature
in water-colour was the late William McTaggart (1835-1910); his
landscapes are all veritably untricked effects of the land’s and sea’s
sunlit and wind-swept moods in which his spontaneous and untrammelled
method aided to a considerable extent his ability to maintain the high
artistic quality of his pictures in oils.
A less vivid outlook attracts the essentially water-colour artist, R. B.
Nisbet, his landscapes being almost exclusively low-toned aspects of
Nature, and technically similar to the works of the previously mentioned
Dutch masters. Universally his work has been vastly appreciated and
probably he can claim more official honours than any other Scottish
water-colour painter. Not a few of the younger men owe some of the rarer
qualities in their work to his sympathetic influence.
In companionship with Nisbet, Tom Scott is probably now, with the
exception of Ewen Geddes, the only entirely water-colour painter in
Scotland. His _motifs_, however, being chiefly inspired by the glamour
surrounding the Borderland, are more of a figured historical nature, but
not the least emotional pleasure is derived from their distinctive
landscape settings.
Incidentally humble crofts and lowland scenery attract the artist in
Ewen Geddes, and as a painter of snow landscapes, I doubt if there is
another water-colourist who as sensitively portrays the spirit of the
wintry day. But to pick and choose from amongst the many artists whose
work entitles them to be more than briefly mentioned, regardless of
individual precedence, one may not omit W. Y. MacGregor, A.R.S.A., whose
inspiring enthusiasm as father of the famed Glasgow School of Painters
is historically honoured, and whose latter-day charcoal and water-colour
landscapes are not the least distinctive expressions of genuine art;
while amongst younger men, prominently known, are the distinguished
exponent C. H. Mackie, R.S.A., R.S.W., whose work and ideas declared in
various mediums are extremely invigorating, and J. Hamilton Mackenzie,
R.S.W., A.R.E., who, as well as a painter in oils, pastellist and
etcher, is an admirable water-colourist. To further enumerate one must
include the names of such personal landscape artists as J. Whitelaw
Hamilton, A.R.S.A., R.S.W., Archibald Kay, A.R.S.A., R.S.W., T.M. Hay,
R.S.W., Alexander MacBride, R.I., R.S.W., Stanley Cursiter, R.S.W.,
James Herald, and Stewart Orr.
But to deal more minutely with the artists who are here represented, A.
K. Brown (Plate XVI) must take precedence for his untiring services
rendered to the promotion of the delightful art of water-colour painting
in Scotland. Though born in Edinburgh in 1849, it has been in Glasgow
that the greater part of his life has been lived, and with the art
affairs of that city he has been most directly connected. His early
years were spent there as a calico-print designer, the artistic
relationship of which soon led him to the higher ideal of landscape
painting, the hills and glens as seen from a moorland road or mountain
burn being the themes that most intimately allured him; yet not that
aspect of the rugged inhumanity of the hills, but where man has trod,
and where the shepherd’s whistle may be familiarly heard. It is, too,
that sensation of friendliness felt amongst the hills that pervades his
works. Treated with a methodical tenderness, they never exhibitionally
assert themselves, but must be seen singly to convey their full
attractiveness.
In early association next to A. K. Brown would be R. W. Allan, born in
Glasgow in 1852 (Plate XV). In his young days, inspired by his father
who was a well-known lithographer in the city, he certainly had not the
usual students’ struggles to contend with, and was soon one of the few
Scottish painters in water-colour who fully realized the beauty of the
unsullied quality the medium possessed, by his broad decisive handling
in comparison with the prevalent minute finish indulged in. It is now,
however, about thirty-five years since he left his native city for
London, where he has not only become a distinguished painter in oils,
but also a prominent member of the “Old” Water-Colour Society.
Two years later than R. W. Allan, James Paterson (Plate XXI) was born in
Glasgow, and is noted there as one of the first artists energetically
active, with W. Y. MacGregor, in forming a bolder style of painting than
had been previously fashionable, and who, with the grouping of a few
other enthusiasts later, became known to the art world as the Glasgow
School of Painters. Their revolutionary aims and ideals influenced to a
remarkable extent artists and painting in general throughout Scotland.
Though equally well known as a painter of the figure and occasional
portraits, it is as a landscapist that Paterson’s reputation has been
most uniquely established, his present Dumfriesshire home providing him
extensively with subjects in harmony with his earlier technically broad
sympathies.
Not so closely connected with the Glasgow School movement as James
Paterson, James Cadenhead, born in Aberdeen in 1858 (Plate XVII), became
somewhat imbued with its views. Like the majority of now celebrated
water-colourists, oil painting claimed his first attention. Less
realistic in outlook than his brother artists, his work assumed a more
conceptionally decorative tendency and displayed a flat treatment,
technically similar to that which one associates with the landscape
artists of Japan. It was by such individual features that attention was
drawn to his work, and in 1893 he was elected a member of the Royal
Scottish Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and nine years later an
associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, where, in both exhibitions, his
work shares with that of other leading artists a distinctive admiration.
Turning to the illustration _Suffolk Pastures_, by E. A. Walton (Plate
XXIV), one finds the work of an artist whose ability as a painter is
unanimously respected amongst his fellows. Born in Renfrewshire in 1860,
he is also one who has been historically associated with the
revolutionary Glasgow School; originally a landscape artist, he is
nevertheless one of the leading Scottish portrait painters. But to
confine my appreciation to his landscape work, it is with a lingering
doubt whether it be his examples in oils or water-colours which are the
more enticing if a choice were demanded. It is probably to his work in
the gentler medium I would assign the talent of the man and the artist
as being most completely revealed, especially favouring those drawings
executed on a grey-brown millboard, or some other similarly tinted
paper, with which his skilful use of body-colour mingles and expresses
his prenurtured vision of design and colour harmonies for which he is so
greatly esteemed.
Five years later than E. A. Walton, D. Y. Cameron was born in Glasgow
(Plate XVIII). With the exception of Muirhead Bone, there is no other
Scottish artist whose pre-eminence as an etcher is as universally
admitted. Within recent years his reputation as a painter has been
rapidly becoming as widely acknowledged. In his early etchings, oils,
and water-colours, though previous masters’ influences were easily
detected, his gift of selection and fitness placed his results on a
higher artistic plane than those by whom he had been evidently inspired,
and to-day his work is always amongst the most dignified and refined in
any exhibition. Technically he resorts to no fumbled trickery, nor does
he strain any of the means he uses beyond their own inherent powers.
Before his landscapes one feels the mood of time and place charmingly
interpreted, such moods of Nature, when the trivialities of the day have
passed, or only those remain which fittingly appeal, with their silent
ponderings.
In 1869, at Dalry, Ayrshire, George Houston was born (Plate XX), and it
is as a painter of that part of Scotland that his name became most in
evidence before the Scottish art world in 1904 by a large-scaled canvas,
_An Ayrshire Landscape_, shown at the exhibition of the Glasgow Fine
Arts Institute. No little praise was bestowed upon it by artists and
public alike, resulting in its being purchased for the City’s permanent
collection. But memories recall other earlier and smaller works
creatively quite as important. To place Houston amongst the Scottish
artists is to do so individually, as his work is extremely personal,
both technically and compositionally. Late winter and early spring
landscapes attract him most, the time, too, when the earth is just
dappled with snow, and the atmosphere and undergrowth alive in all their
gentle colour-harmony. A keen lover of Nature, little escapes his
observation, and it is those qualities of his mind and outlook, so
carefully expressed in his oil paintings, that arrest admiring attention
in his water-colours of similar themes.
By age, W. Russell Flint and D. Murray Smith belong to the group of
younger Scottish painters, and otherwise, similarly, both artists have
been resident in England for a considerable time. It is only within
recent years that their work has appeared, as it were, anew in the
Scottish exhibitions. W. Russell Flint (Plate XIX) was born in Edinburgh
in 1880; originally studying in the art school there, he made his home
in London in 1900, where, after a short course at Heatherley’s Academy,
his name and work came rapidly into prominence. In 1913 he was awarded
the silver medal for his water-colours in the Salon des Artistes
Français. The following year he was elected an associate of the Royal
Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and a full member in 1917. As an
artist both figure and landscape equally reveal his versatile ability.
As an illustrator, too, he can claim no less distinctive recognition by
his charming imagery expressed in that phase of his talent in the
publications of the Riccardi Press. Thoroughly acquainted with the
medium of water-colour, he applies it with no special mannerism other
than the choice his vision dictates and the subjects of his mind most
emotionally demand.
Though less varied paths tempt the outlook of D. Murray Smith (Plate
XXII), his spacious conceptions of landscapes are uncommonly
interesting. The admirable characteristics of largeness and freedom,
which earlier prophesied a coming artist in the Scottish capital where
he was born, have altered little. As an etcher of illustrative
landscapes in those days he gained no meagre reputation, which he has
vastly enhanced in England, where he settled some twenty-four years ago.
In all his works there pervades a strong affection for flat expanses of
Nature, unhampered in the composition by the human element, save for
friendly wayside cottages or distant villages. It is, however, those
examples where even such features are the least prominent, like his
unpeopled roads, that have a most abiding charm, manifesting at times a
vision and technical qualities akin to the rare landscapes by the old
Dutch and early English masters, and to the French in their Corotesque
and lyrical love of trees. And it is, perhaps, to the lyrical aspects of
Nature that water-colour is most closely allied, and in such of her
voiceless poems most expressively lives the spirit of the medium.
[Illustration: PLATE XV.
“THE MAPLE IN AUTUMN.” BY ROBERT W. ALLAN, R.W.S., R.S.W.]
[Illustration: PLATE XVI.
“BEN MORE.” BY A. K. BROWN, R.S.A., R.S.W.
(_In the possession of J. Whitelaw Hamilton, Esq., A.R.S.A._)]
[Illustration: PLATE XVII.
“A MOORLAND.” BY JAMES CADENHEAD, A.R.S.A., R.S.W.]
[Illustration: PLATE XVIII.
“AUTUMN IN STRATH TAY.” BY D. Y. CAMERON, A.R.A., R.S.A., R.W.S., R.S.W.
(_In the possession of R. Skinner, Esq._)] [Illustration: PLATE XIX.
“APRIL EVENING, RYDAL WATER.” BY W. RUSSELL FLINT, R.W.S., R.S.W.
(_In the possession of Messrs. Ernest Brown & Phillips, the Leicester
Galleries._)]
[Illustration: PLATE XX.
“IONA.” BY GEORGE HOUSTON, A.R.S.A., R.S.W.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXI.
“FRENCHLAND TO QUEENSBERRY, MOFFAT DALE.” BY JAMES PATERSON, R.S.A.,
R.W.S., R.S.W.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXII.
“ON THE WAY TO THE SOUTH DOWNS.” BY D. MURRAY SMITH, A.R.W.S.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIII.
“A BIT OF HIGH CORRIE.” BY E. A. TAYLOR.
(_In the possession of Charles Holme, Esq._)]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIV.
“SUFFOLK PASTURES.” BY E. A. WALTON, R.S.A., P. R.S.W.
(_In the possession of John Tattersall, Esq._)]