Waller Hugh Paton, R.S.A., R.S.W.

Sale: Christie's, London, 25 May 2007, lot 46
Patrick Bourne, Edinburgh
Purchased from the above by the present owner

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1859, no. 566

Loch Achray was a favourite sketching ground for Waller Hugh Paton in 1859-60. Loch Achray forms one end of the mile long gorge of the Trossachs, with Loch Katrine as the other terminus. The area is very picturesque, and was once called 'a synopsis of Scotland' by H.V. Morton (Cited in Richenda Miers, Scotland: Highlands and Islands, London, 1998, p. 84).

Paton was born in Wooers-Alley, Dunfermline, in July 1828. He favoured painting in Perthshire, Aberdeenshire and on the Isle of Arran often choosing to painting the dramatic beauty of sunset with purple tones of northern light prevailing. He was the first Scottish artist to execute paintings entirely en plein air. In this painting Paton reveals a close study of nature and is comparable with the work of the English Pre-Raphaelites in execution.

Paton began his career as an assistant to his father who was a damask designer. In 1848 he became interested in landscape painting and became a pupil of the watercolourist and historical genre painter John Houston (1812-1884). In 1858 he joined his brother Joseph Noel Paton in illustrating Ayton's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. His brother was a painter of historical, religious, mythological and allegorical subjects, also a sculptor, illustrator and poet. He was knighted in 1866.

Paton moved to Edinburgh in 1859. In 1860, he visited London and made journeys to Europe in 1861 and 1868. He became an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1857 and a full Member in 1865. In 1862 he was commissioned by Queen Victoria to make a drawing of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.