PLATE XIII.
“A POOL IN THE WOODS.” BY W. EYRE WALKER, R.W.S.
PLATE XIV.
“IN CROWHURST PARK, SUSSEX.” BY SIR E. A. WATERLOW, R.A., R.W.S., H.R.S.W.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH
LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN WATER-COLOURS: SCOTTISH PAINTERS. BY
E. A. TAYLOR
TO lift the veil enshrouding the past and, though but dimly, recall its artists’ lives and works may appeal to a few only. The secrets of the great are already known; their deeds, as modern times desire, will be more rapidly found tabulated in any biographical dictionary; those whom chance and fate have less favoured will serve no other purpose than that of a poor remembrance. Nevertheless to separate those who followed the ways of art in other than water-colour landscape painting, I must recall some at least whose influence of mind and work aided to attain in Scotland the important position it commands to-day. Amongst the first connected with landscape painting the names of John and Robert Norie cannot fairly be omitted. Carrying on a business in Edinburgh at the beginning of the eighteenth century as house painters and decorators, it was in their decorative schemes that landscape played the most significant part, a form of decoration of considerable fashion in the Scottish capital at that time, and applied in various ways to doors, panels, mantelpieces, etc., of private houses; and apart from their business, both father and sons painted some landscapes of no mean order. It was in their workshops, too, that some afterwards notable artists, in their early life, served as apprentices, famous amongst them being Alexander Runciman (1736-1785), John Wilson (1774-1855), and James Howe (1780-1836).