Erskine Nicol, R.S.A., A.R.A. 1825-1904

The Artist's Family, and thence by descent to the late R. Robertson, Ayrshire;
Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow;
Private Collection.

Although born in Leith, Scotland, Nicol spend a crucial period of his formative years working in Ireland as a teacher and portrait painter in Dublin from 1846 - 1850. It was as a painter of Irish subjects predominantly focusing on the working life of traditional Irish communities that he became widely known. Works such as The Emigrants (1864, Tate, London), depicting two emigrants waiting for the train at Ballinasloe on their way to Galway, captured the imagination of the public during the period and his lively and often humourous genre scenes have come to encapsulate the life and times of Victorian Ireland. Although Nicol moved back to Scotland and then to London, he returned to Ireland on a regular basis and it is highly likely that the present work was executed on a summer painting trip to his favourite painting ground.

With over 14,000 km of fish bearing rivers in Ireland, the subject was not difficult to chance upon and in the present work, Nicol has caught a poacher in action, deep in concentration, on the point of spearing a fish. Known as the 'fish of knowledge' in Irish mythology, the salmon was a common poaching target and the work gains an added significance in light of the years of hardship experienced by the Irish after the failure of the potato crop in the late 1840s.

The meticulous detail of the natural landscape surrounding the poacher in the present work also demonstrates Nicol's knowledge and understanding of the Pre-Raphaelite approach to the natural world.  Following on from Ruskin's often quoted advice of 'rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing' (Ruskin, quoted in Allen Staley, 'Rejecting Nothing, Selecting Nothing', Pre-Raphaelite Vision, exh.cat., Tate Britain, London, 12 February - 3 May 2004, p.25), Pre-Raphaelites such as Millais and Holman Hunt, insisted on an uncompromising attention to detail. Whilst the figurative components to their works could be painted in the studio, the landscape elements were to be painted 'down to the most minute detail, from nature, and from nature only. Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself' (Ruskin, 1853, ibid., p.26). Indeed, when painting his now seminal work, Ophelia (1851-2, Tate, London), Millais spent June - December 1851 painting outside, within the landscape, directly onto the canvas. Executed only a few years later, in 1857, the detailed background of the present work may also have been painted in front of the subject and the fine brushwork and painstaking application of paint would certainly have won Ruskin's approval.