Beschreibung:

(Scottish Paintings, 5th December 2019) Peter Graham R.A., H.R.S.A (Scottish 1836-1921) A Mountain Road Signed and dated 1881, oil on canvas 136cm x 184cm (53.5in x 72.5in) Note: Peter Graham was a Scottish artist renowned for his landscape works, which were magnificent in both scale and execution. He had a remarkable ability to capture the transient character of nature and the romance of the Scottish Highlands in his grand paintings. In a review of the Royal Scottish Academy’s Exhibition of 1860, one critic remarked that Graham’s paintings ‘are a very luxury to the eye; the colour is so fresh and true, the mosses are so soft and velvety, the lichens are so grey-green. You smell the fir-trees when you stand before the first, the joy of summer-tide seems to slide into the sense when you look at the second’ (“Iconoclast” Reviewed, Maulstick, 1860, p.6). Graham began his artistic career at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, training under Robert Scott Lauder and initially concentrating on figure subjects. However, a holiday to Deeside in 1859 inspired him to turn his attention to landscape paintings. Graham’s work was heavily influenced by the evocative poetry of Sir Walter Scott as well as the dramatic landscape paintings of Horatio McCulloch When he moved to London, he began to paint on a grand scale, emphasising the awe-inspiring magnificence of the Scottish scenery. These large paintings particularly appealed to an urban-based audience, and Graham continued to gain popularity across the UK. Reflecting on Graham’s training and success, James L. Caw wrote, ‘His earlier pictures revealed him as an acute observer of Nature, as a careful student of atmospheric effect and natural form’ (Scottish Painting: Past and Present, James L. Caw, 1908, p.255). Graham was well received at the Royal Scottish Academy, where he started exhibiting in 1855, and made a name for himself in England, becoming an Associate of the Royal Academy in London in 1877. He was then elected a full Royal Academician at the end of 1881, and a Senior Royal Academician in 1919.