£10,000
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture ft. S.J. Peploe at 150 | 668
Auction: Scottish Paintings & Sculpture ft. S.J. Peploe at 150
Signed with a monogram and dated 1867, inscribed verso, arched top, oil on canvas
Note: The Paton family kept a home in Arran, and the island proved an enduring source of inspiration for Waller Hugh throughout his life. He is renowned for his mastery of sunsets, and this coastal scene bathed in golden-pink light is a particularly strong example. From the warm glow on the rocks and haystacks in the foreground to the distant violet hills beyond, every component is realised with truth and subtlety, convincingly evoking an early Autumnal evening. The scene’s delicate transience may be connected to the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism, but also to Paton’s preference for developing the entirety of his composition outdoors, at the time a pioneering practice in Scotland. Beside the cottage beyond the trees, two figures watch the changing sky. By composing the scene as though observed from the coastal path, Paton also invites the viewer to pause and contemplate the beauty of the landscape.
Waller Hugh Paton was born in Wooers-Alley, Dunfermline. His family was artistic: his father was a damask designer, and his siblings Sir Joseph Noel Paton and Amelia Robertson Hill were both artists. From 1948, Waller Hugh Paton trained with the accomplished landscape and genre painter John Adam Houston, learning the importance of rigorous observation and the principles of perspective. John Ruskin was a family friend, and in 1853 Paton is likely to have attended the artist and critic’s Edinburgh lectures on the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism.
In March of 1879, the Art Journal wrote that Waller Hugh Paton’s landscapes possessed ‘as little of the human as must be, as much of the divine as may... although entirely faithful in feature to the locale, [his work] is handled with such delicate grace, and is so redolent of the sweet sanctity of perfect peace, that we seem to gaze rather on a fairy region than on any this world can offer’.