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Journey Through the Highlands & Beyond With Highlights from Scottish Art

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The upcoming Scottish Art sale in London on the 18 September showcases artworks spanning more than two hundred years and includes paintings by the Scottish Colourists alongside many contemporary Scottish Artists. The sale is on view in Edinburgh from the 13-15 August during the Festival. Click through to see highlights from the sale.

Past Auction
Scottish Art
18 September 2019 | 2:00 PM BST | London

Journey Through the Highlands & Beyond With Highlights from Scottish Art

  • Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, Cove, Loch Long.
    Estimate £30,000–50,000.
    Loch Long is situated to the west of Loch Lomond in western Scotland, and the village of Cove on its banks provides spectacular views over the loch and the southern uplands. This colourful landscape, with its vast skies, changing light and reflections in the water, fascinated Cadell. As with his many paintings of Iona, he captures the view with bold colour and confident brushwork that clearly demonstrate the influence of French Post-Impressionism.

    Cadell would often stay in Cove with George Service, a wealthy ship owner whom he had met on his first visit to Iona in 1912. The Services owned a large summer residence in Cove, as well as a yacht, and Cadell often joined them for sailing trips around the Western Isles. The pair formed a strong friendship, and Service became one of Cadell’s most important patrons, purchasing over 100 of his works
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  • David Yarrow, Over the Sea to Skye, 2017.
    Estimate £12,000–18,000.
    The photographic equivalent of a Landseer or an Ansdell, David Yarrow’s Over the Sea to Skye deftly captures the grandeur and majesty of Scotland’s highlands and wildlife in a moment of exhilarating confrontation. Yarrow resorts to innovative strategies such as scented or remote-controlled cameras in his pursuit of natural drama.
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  • James Francis Williams, View of the Edinburgh from the Union Canal.
    Estimate £5,000–7,000.
    A captivating glimpse along the transport artery of a city on the cusp of the railway era, Williams portrays the Union Canal and iconic skyline of Edinburgh Castle and St Giles’ Cathedral suffused with a warm, hazy light. Assiduously filled with details of everyday life, Williams’s painting adeptly stages the activity of the humble bargeman and towpath porter against a monumental urban landscape.
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  • John Duncan Fergusson, Faubourg St Jacques, Paris, 1908.
    Estimate £80,000–120,000.
    Faubourg St Jacques, Paris is one of several Parisian street-scenes by Fergusson and was executed shortly after he relocated to the French capital permanently in 1907. It depicts Montparnasse, where Fergusson lived, and where artists, dancers, poets and writers congregated at this time to create an exciting, bohemian atmosphere. Fergusson thrived in this milieu, moving in artistic circles that included Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, forming a close relationship with American artist Anne Estelle Rice, and drawing inspiration from French avant-garde artists and movements.
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  • Samuel John Peploe, Still Life with Roses (recto); Still Life with Teapot and Fruit (verso), circa 1920.
    Estimate £150,000–200,000.
    Painted circa 1920 Still Life with Roses demonstrates Peploe's fascination with the floral still life as well as shape and form, colour and tone. Indeed, Peploe himself stated: "There is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not - colours, forms, relation - I can never see the mystery coming to an end."

    The spherical melon painted with thick confident brushstrokes sits just off-centre, whilst planes of strong primary colour create a dynamic contrast. The pink roses are dramatically cropped and thrown into relief against the green drapery behind. The cup and saucer in the foreground are exactingly studied and contrast strikingly with the angular table top.
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  • Arthur Melville, A Cairo Coffee Stall, 1881.
    Estimate £20,000–30,000.
    One measure of a talented artist is the ability to work in different environments, and in this respect few come close to the wide-ranging career of Arthur Melville. The striking epithet of ‘artist-adventurer’ is no exaggeration for the revolutionary watercolourist, whose remarkable travels took him from Angus to Venice, Barbizon to Baghdad, Glasgow to Granada. In Autumn 1881 Melville journeyed to Cairo intending to stay in the east for two months; captivated by the intense light and colourful chaos, his painting kept him there for two years.
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  • Sir John Lavery, North Berwick No. 3, 1921.
    Estimate £150,000–200,000.
    Between 1921 and 1922 Lavery painted a number of views of North Berwick, recording the changes of sea and sky as carefully as the fortunes of his sporting companions. Around fifteen paintings of the golf course have been identified, including a version comparable to the present work that currently resides in the Tate Collection.

    Both works look out across the bay from a small hillock used for teeing off; beyond, the coastline curves round into the approaches of the Firth of Forth, with the island of Fidra just visible on the extreme right. But whereas in the Tate version the tide is out, and the hills of Fife are visible through the clear air, in North Berwick No. 3 the calm sea laps at the edge of the course, the sky filled with hazy cloud subtly illuminated by the silvery sunset light.
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  • Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, Roses.
    Estimate £150,000–200,000.
    Despite echoes of Manet’s influence, Roses varies markedly from Cadell’s impressionistic earlier works, such as Reflection of 1915 , which exhibits far looser brushwork and a muted palette. The present lot marks a shift towards maximising colour and minimising handling, and fellow Scottish Colourist Samuel John Peploe can be credited with the development of stronger colour and tighter compositions in Cadell’s still-lifes.

    Though he studied in Paris, Cadell spent less time in France than the other three Colourists, instead becoming acquainted with new developments of the French Avant-Garde indirectly through Peploe and his works. In paintings such as Roses, Cadell fuses the influence of French Post-Impressionism and the elegance and sophistication of Art Deco with elements of Orientalism, alluded to by the inclusion of the black fan.
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  • Edward Atkinson Hornel, Gathering Mushrooms, 1901.
    Estimate £30,000–50,000.
    Closely associated with the Glasgow Boys for his preoccupation with naturalistic light, Hornel deploys striking broken brushwork and strong, densely-patterned colours to capture a vibrant moment of innocence. Produced during one of the most celebrated periods of the artist’s oeuvre around the turn of the century, Gathering Mushrooms is typical in its tapestry-like depiction of children and swans in the Galloway countryside.
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  • William McTaggart, Noon, 1890.
    Estimate £15,000–20,000.
    William McTaggart is celebrated as a painter of energetic seascapes, but in this small, ebullient picture the focus is equally upon those who depended upon such settings for their livelihood. Looking towards a headland a girl and baby sit and play, huddled fishermen mend their nets, while fishing boats lie at anchor or skim through the choppy-white waves of the stridently blue bay.
    Noon offers an emotive contrast to wilder works like Running for Shelter, painted from an identical viewpoint, or The Storm, another painting begun at the village of Carradale completed in the same year as the present work.
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