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.