samuel bough - The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

SAMUEL BOUGH
1822-1878
Dark green tint here?
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SAMUEL
BOUGH
1822-1878
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Although Bough wasn’t a native Scot – born, Carlisle – he
is one of the most influential figures in the development of
nineteenth-century Scottish landscape painting. He was a
largely self-taught artist and from a young age he travelled
the British Isles painting woodland, moorland, rivers and
coastlines. Always populated with the people that worked the
land, waterways and sea. His early career was spent painting
theatrical sets in Manchester and Glasgow. Gradually, Bough
extricated himself from this work and he and his wife, Bella,
settled in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire at the edge of Cadzow
Forest. Living nearby was fellow painter and friend, Alexander
Fraser and together they comprehensively surveyed the
ancient woodland. Cadzow was part of the great forest that
stretched from Northumberland to the Clyde valley, through
which the wild Chillingham cattle roamed. The ancient oaks,
woodsmen, bark peelers, hunters and cattle supplied plentiful
subject matter.
Bough dedicated himself to landscape painting and became
adept at illustrating the fleeting effects of weather. He looked
for weather that lent drama to a scene and, to this end, he
would ask for forecasts from an Edinburgh fishmonger before
moving quickly to the coast to record it. Bough settled in
Edinburgh in 1855 and over the following two decades the
coastlines of Fife and East Lothian and their picturesque
fishing harbours provided him rich visual content. He painted
them being beaten by turbulent seas and in the calm of low
tide lit with astonishing sunrises and sunsets.
Bough’s balance of realism with the scenic make his
pictures resonate with the viewer – the familiar and the
extraordinary combined.
[ 5 ]
1 Harbour at Low Tide
signed and indistinctly inscribed
oil on canvas · 17 x 24 inches
Note: probably Aberdour Harbour on the Fife
coast.
[ 6 ]
2 Unloading the Catch
signed, signed on panel verso
oil on panel · 12 x 17 inches
Bough’s knowledge of boats and the detail
of masts, rigging and sails is perfectly
demonstrated here. Looking into the
breaking light of day, the shadowy silhouettes of weary fishermen, who have worked
throughout the night, move about the sands.
As the fishing industry expanded rapidly in
the 19th century, open sail-powered fishing
boats like the one depicted in Unloading the
Catch soon became a thing of the past.
[ 7 ]
3 Herring Boats Putting to Sea After Storm
watercolour · 5 x 8 inches
original printed label attached to painting
verso quotes: “Wives and mithers, ’maist
despairin’, Ca’ them lives o’ men.”
– From the song Caller Herrin’ written by
Lady Caroline Oliphant Nairne (1766–1845)
Note: study for painting with same title
exhibited RSA 1856, no. 73.
Provenance
Robert Horn, Dean of the Faculty of
Advocates; Private collection, New York
Herring Boats Putting to Sea After Storm and
pictures like it, marked Bough’s early success
in the RSA exhibitions. This vision of labour
in the face of the elements was a lasting
theme for Bough, as was his preoccupation
with changing skies, with many of his
pictures set at dawn or at twilight.
[ 8 ]
4 Canty Bay, North Berwick
signed and dated 1864
watercolour · 7 x 10 inches
Bough painted Canty Bay many times. He
was a well known character in the village
of North Berwick and when the landlord
of the local inn, George Adams, died in
straightened financial circumstances, Bough
set about painting a picture of the Bass
Rock from Canty Bay which he sold to the
Art Union. He donated the proceeds to the
widow and Adam’s family continued to
occupy the inn for a further 27 years.
Bough’s watercolours, alongside those of
William McTaggart, dominate the development of Scottish watercolour painting
towards a freer plein-air style.
[ 9 ]
5 Ankarstrom on the Zuyder Zee
signed and dated 1862, signed and titled
verso and numbered ‘4’
oil on board · 13 x 14½ inches
Provenance
Private Collection, Canada
Exhibited
Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts 1862–63;
RSA 1863, No.286
Bough travelled widely throughout
Scotland and England and made only
occasional forays into Europe. The Zuyder
Zee, now Zuiderzee, is a shallow bay off
the northwest coast of the Netherlands.
Bough was attracted to the area by its many
fishing villages.
[ 10 ]
6 The Dreadnought
from Greenwich Stairs –
Sun Sinking into Vapours
signed and dated 1861
gouache on canvas
351/2 x 28 inches
Exhibited
Liverpool Academy 1860 (£30)
The Dreadnought was an old Navy
warship, or Hulk, that was moored near
Greenwich. It became a hospital ship
founded to provide health and welfare
for sailors visiting the Thames. This
picture could depict the second
Dreadnought which arrived in 1856 and
was broken up in 1875. It was originally
built as a 120-gun ship called Caledonia
and was built built in 1808 at Plymouth.
This ship replaced the previous
Dreadnought which arrived in 1827 and
left in 1857. The painting combines
Bough’s favourite and most proficiently
executed pictoral elements: shipping
and atmosphere. Looking directly
into the setting sun – contra-jour – the
brooding image of the Dreadnought has
great effect.
[ 11 ]
7 Garngad Hill Looking Towards Glasgow Cathedral
inscribed ‘Glasgow’, signed and dated 1858
watercolour and bodycolour
281/2 x 35 inches
on loan from a private collection
[ 12 ]
The view from Garngad Hill, as the highest
point on the landscape, takes in Glasgow,
from the impressive medieval cathedral of St
Mungo’s to the shamble of cobbled streets
and dwellings of Townhead. During the
19th century Glasgow expanded into one of
the major industrial centres of the world:
shipbuilding, iron and steel production, textile
manufacturing, chemical processing and
railway engineering. Surrounding villages
would eventually be swallowed up as the
city boundary moved ever further out. This
watercolour provides prodigious historical
and topographical information of the time.
It gives a view of the Monkland Canal upon
which traffic reached its peak in the 1850s and
60s, transporting over 1 million tonnes of coal
and iron a year.
In the foreground is Bough seated at an
easel with a dog by his side.
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8 Edinburgh from St Anthony’s Chapel
signed, signed and inscribed ‘Edinboro from
Saint Anthonys Chaple, Sam Bough ARSA’ on
panel verso · attributed to the summer of 1854
oil on panel · 15 x 20 inches
Exhibited
Royal Manchester Institution 1855 (The
property of Messrs. D. Bolongaro & Son.)
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Relatively little is known about the origins
of St Anthony’s Chapel: it may have been an
outlying chapel for Holyrood Abbey. There
are references to a grant from the Pope for
repairs to the Chapel in 1426 and details of its
demise are presumably like that of Holyrood
Abbey itself which fell into disuse and disrepair after the Reformation in 1560.
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9 Edinburgh from Bonnington
signed and inscribed with title
oil on canvas · 25 x 34 inches
Exhibited
RSA 1856, No. 175; Liverpool Academy 1857;
RSA 1876, No. 192, Lent by the RSA; Sam
Bough on the Forth and Tay, Crawford Arts
Centre, St Andrews 1995, No.35; Bourne
Fine Art, Edinburgh 1995; Tullie House, City
Museum and Gallery, Carlisle 1996
[ 16 ]
The Scotsman’s review of the 1856 RSA
exhibition remarked: ‘From amidst the group
of younger landscape painters we may be
excused from singling out Samuel Bough, the
more particularly as he is almost a stranger
amongst us…We have heard it said that Mr
Bough is too clever, but could not find it
in our hearts to wish him less so and hope
that many future exhibitions will witness his
further progress and success.’
[ 17 ]
10 A West Highland Loch
inscribed ‘To Mr. MacDonald with S.B’s kind
regards, May 1860’, indistinctly inscribed
and dated on frame verso oil on canvas ·
12 x 18 inches
Provenance Aitken Dott, no. T1643
[ 18 ]
Mr A.G. MacDonald, likely the MacDonald
of this inscription, bought watercolours of
Glasgow and its environs from Bough in 1850
and became a life-long friend and patron.
Between 1856 and 1858 Bough went on
a long sketching tour through the western
Highlands with fellow painter and friend
Alexander Fraser. The trip included Inverary,
Loch Fyne, Oban, Loch Awe, the Isle of Skye
and Ben Nevis. It was probably during these
excursions that the painting was conceived.
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11 Leith Harbour, Edinburgh
signed · watercolour, bodycolour and pencil
91/2 x 131/2 inches
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12 Newhaven Harbour on the Firth of Forth
watercolour, bodycolour and pencil
91/4 x 131/4 inches
Newhaven harbour was founded by King
James IV as a royal dockyard and can trace
its history back to 1504. It was known as
the premier oyster port of Scotland until
around 1890 when they became scarce due to
overworking. Herring was its main-stay from
the late 18th century and Newhaven became
the fish-market for Edinburgh by the late 19th
century. This watercolour depicts an everyday
scene at the harbour: Newhaven fishwives
clothed in their distinctive Flemish caps and
brightly coloured waistcoats and aprons.
Bough had a great ability to depict crowds
and here shows the industriousness of the
town’s fisherfolk in full swing.
[ 21 ]
13 Leaving for the Hunt, Cadzow
signed and dated 1885
oil on board · 181/4 x 243/4 inches
on loan from a private collection
EXHIBITED
The Scottish National Exhibition, Glasgow, 1911
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PROVENANCE
Sir John Wilson of Airdrie, 1st Bt (1843–1918)
14 Woodcutters, Cadzow Forest
signed and dated 1861
oil on panel · 113/4 x 16 inches
on loan from a private collection
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15 Peeling Oak Bark, Cadzow Forest
signed and dated 1851, inscribed with title
oil on canvas · 39 x 59 inches
Exhibited
Royal Scottish Academy 1853, No.306; The
Bough and Chalmers Loan Collection 1880,
No.151 (property of Mr A. Brown, Glasgow).
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In 1851, the West of Scotland Fine Art
Association staged a competition for the best
painting of Scottish landscape. The story
goes that, while walking in Cadzow Forest,
Bough’s wife, Bella, pointed to a group of
women peeling bark. Bough sketched the
scene and entered a picture entitled Glade in
the Forest, Cadzow – and won. We can’t be
sure if our picture, painted in the same year
and on a scale worthy of exhibiting, won the
prize. But winning the gold medal may have
contributed to his leaving his job as a scene
painter for theatres in Glasgow to move to
Hamilton on the fringe of Cadzow Forest
in the summer of 1851. Bough and his friend
Alexander Fraser lived in nearby Barncluith
and for the next three years the two men
worked closely, sometimes collaborating on
the same work.
[ 25 ]
16 On the River Orwell, Suffolk
signed · oil on canvas · 12 x 18 inches
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17 Sunrise on the Fife Coast
signed, inscribed with title
oil on canvas · 10½ x 14½ inches
This is probably Aberdour harbour on the
Fife coast at sunrise painted contra-jour. Bough
favoured this compositional device of painting into the sun and many of his pictures see
him use it to great effect, as he has done here.
The sky and clouds are at their most dramatic
and give rise to striking compositions with
a foreground plunged into darkness and its
subject set in silhouette against a rising or
setting sun.
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18 Ploughing
signed and dated 1854
oil on board
10 x 14¼ inches
Provenance
J.B. Bennett & Sons, Glasgow
[ 28 ]
19 Liddesdale
signed, titled and dated 1866
pencil and watercolour
9 x 18 inches
Provenance
Miss K.E. Prain, Kensington
[ 29 ]
20 Looking towards Edinburgh at Sunset
signed · oil on canvas · 231/2 x 41½ inches
Provenance
Private Collection New York and Scotland
This large scale oil is painted from East
Lothian looking west towards Edinburgh –
most likely from Cockenzie. Clearly visible in
the distance is the unmistakable silhouette of
Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat.
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21 St Andrews – Awaiting the Fleet
signed and dated 1861–62
oil on canvas · 45 x 60 inches
on loan from a private collection
Exhibited
RSA 1861; Bourne Fine Art Sam Bough, On
Forth and Tay, 1995
Despite little formal training, Sam Bough was,
with Horatio McCulloch, the most accomplished landscape painter in Scotland in the
middle years of the nineteenth century. He
was equally masterly in watercolour and oil
and he composed and handled large canvasses
as convincingly as small panels. Although
born in Carlisle, he was a thorough countryman, leading a bohemian life with gypsies for
much of his early career. It was perhaps this
unconventional approach to life, as well as his
combative nature, that delayed his election to
full membership of RSA until 1875, three years
before his death.
Bough excelled at large-scale oils such as
this one. The leaden sky and tempestous sea
fill most of the canvas. The pier throngs with
anxious family awaiting the return of the
fishing fleet, gulls wheeling overhead. In the
foreground looking out towards the viewer
is Bough’s dog, Madame Sacchi, who often
made an appearance in his pictures –­all other
eyes intent on the horizon.
A painting entitled St. Andrews: ‘When
the Stormy Winds Do Blow’ (exhibited RSA,
1861) could well be the same picture as this.
Bough’s biographer, Gilpin, describes it as
a large canvas and one of the artist’s most
successful efforts, full of ‘dash and movement’. When painting the aforementioned
picture, Bough engaged two Newhaven
fishermen, father and son, to stand for models
which could well be the figures standing at
the wall looking to sea in this painting.
[ 33 ]
22 Aberdour Harbour, on the Forth
signed and dated 1853
oil on canvas · 13 x 17 inches
on loan from a private collection
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Like his rival McCulloch, Bough was an
early exponent of painting oils out of doors.
He had a sure and knowledgeable eye for the
effects of light and weather conditions. So
excited was he by painting the weather that
he would obtain forecasts from one of the
principal fishmongers in Edinburgh. However,
his close friend and drinking companion
Robert Louis Stevenson reckoned that the
secret of his art lay in ‘the crystallisation of
daydreams; in changing, not copying, fact.’
23 View of Dysart on the Forth
signed and dated 1858
oil on canvas · 23 x 31 inches
[ 35 ]
24 Leith Sands
signed recto and signed and inscribed with
title verso
oil on board · 51/2 x 11 inches
Further Reading
Hitchon, Gil and Pat, Sam Bough RSA,
The Rivers in Bohemia, Avon 1998
Gilpin Sydney, Sam Bough his Life and Works,
London 1905
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Published by The Fine Art Society for the
exhibition Samuel Bough, 1822–1878 held
at 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, from
3 October to 8 November 2014.
Catalogue © The Fine Art Society
Photography by John Mckenzie
Designed and typeset in Dante by Dalrymple
Produced in Scotland by Thoughtwell Ltd
Front cover: detail from Edinburgh from
St Anthony’s Chapel [cat.8]
Back cover: Canty Bay, North Berwick [cat.4]
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