The Scottish School of Painting (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... and in his contributions to the Institution the ruined castles and keeps which fringe the coasts and dominate the straths of his native country are leading features. After 1829 loch and glen furnish the motifs; castles are still numerous, but the sea no longer fascinates. Coruisk and Blaavin, the weird forest of Rothiemurchus and the solitudes of Kintyre make a stronger appeal to the emotional nature of the painter. In 1822 and 1824 he exhibited two of these more characteristic works, Aberlady Bay and Fast Castle. In the former he has adopted the scheme of warm greys, less usual in his practice than could be desired, which lends itself to a more natural lighting. Here and in similar pictures he may have been affected by the seascapes of John Wilson, who, though settled in London, was a contributor to the Scottish exhibitions. It is not quite clear which of Lord Kingsburghs two pictures of Fast Castle is the one exhibited at the Royal Institution in 1824. If that from below--as is most likely--where the insignificant remains of " Wolfs Crag" are perched on the beetling cliffs to the right, it is the prototype of a class which included most of the seaward castles of Scotland, and culminated in the Dwnluce of two years later. But few of these captivate the imagination as does this first essay on that rock-bound coast which furnished their original inspiration. In the later pictures the conventional creeps in, the steep cliffs are wreathed with foliage which seems strangely out of place, and the rocks which close in the composition of the foreground to right or left are conformed to a type which does duty for Tantallon, Dunluce, or Ravensheugh, as the case may be. In the Fast Castle the idealisation is on true lines; the character of the...