Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran. 1859. Graphite and watercolour, heightened with white, on paper laid down to card. 9 7/8 x 14 inches (25.1 x 35.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.
Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1865, the year following Dyce's death. The artist seems to have initially travelled to the island of Arran on the west coast of Scotland in 1856. The visit that was to prove most productive, however, was the one that he made in the summer of 1859. At this stage in his career Dyce was only producing a few pictures a year because of his increasingly poor health. The village of Glen Rosa, and the valley and burn of the same name that lead down to Brodick Bay, are located on the east side of Arran. The watercolour shows the burn itself and the mountainous interior, including rock formations which had been significantly modified by glacial action. Christopher Newall feels the inclusion of the picturesque figure of the young shepherdess and her flock suggests Dyce intended the picture for sale although, in fact, it remained in the artist's possession until his death (122). Another surviving watercolour from the same 1859 trip, Goat Fell, Isle of Arran, is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London [museum no. 447-1888]. This picture shows essentially the same view towards the northwest, but with a different effect of light and a much more cursory and loosely handled treatment of the foreground. The close proximity of these two locations suggests that Dyce's place of residence on the isle was likely not far from here (Thomson 168). Neither of these two works was a study for the more ambitious landscape in oil that Dyce painted on the island that same visit entitled A Scene in Arran, now in the collection of the Aberdeen Art Gallery. This latter painting appears to be a view close to the mouth of the Rosa River.
Dyce only occasionally did pure landscape paintings in oil or watercolour and these were executed, for the most part, when he was on holidays. Newall feels he probably painted Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran as a means of relaxation and recuperation from the strain he had endured from the long hours he spent recently painting the frescoes for the Queen's Robing Room at the Palace of Westminster. On Arran he was able to paint for his own pleasure out of doors and on a small scale. Newall has commented about this work: "The watercolour is a beautiful and representative example of his careful observation of natural subjects, and conveys the sense of delight that the artist felt to find himself in the open landscape of his native country" (122).
Dyce's Scientific Interest in Geology in Relation to this Watercolour
Dyce shared with his friend John Ruskin a keen interest in geology and the physical characteristics that distinguish different types of landscapes. Dyce would certainly have read the section "Of Mountain Beauty" found in Volume four of Ruskin's Modern Painters published in 1857, in which Ruskin insists "that the landscape painter must understand the physical characteristics and geographic mechanisms of the topography with which he was faced to make his representations of it useful and of worth" (Newall 122). This keen interest in geology likely encouraged Dyce's visits to regions with interesting geological topographies like Arran, Scotland, and Wales, in order to paint their landscapes. Dyce felt, when comparing the mountainous landscapes of both Wales and Scotland, that the Welsh landscape was wilder and more rugged, and more clearly revealing of its geological history. The landscape features Dyce encountered on Arran obviously had a huge impact upon him. In a letter of October 20, 1860 to his brother-in-law, Robert Dundas Cay, Dyce wrote: "The only place I have seen in Scotland which reminds me of the very wild parts of North Wales is Glen Rosa in Arran" (Dyce papers, Chapter XI, qtd. in Newall 122). The spectacular landscape that Dyce has captured in this watercolour is a quintessential piece of Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting that would have greatly appealed to Ruskin. Newall has commented on how Dyce has incorporated Arran's geological formations into this watercolour:
In the present drawing Dyce has looked carefully at the mountainous interior of the island, the granite and gabbro rock formations of which had been smoothed and softened by glacial action, although Goat Fell stands forth as a jutting pyramidal peak. The painter has also observed the Triassic sandstone of the foreground, a bar of which is seen on the right side, and the loose shales through which the burn has cut its course and which show as an exposed cliff-face on its banks. [122]
Bibliography
Dyce, James Stirling. Dyce Papers, an unpublished typescript of the Life, Correspondence and Writings of William Dyce. Aberdeen Art Gallery archives.
Newall, Christopher. A Great British Collection. The Pictures Collected by Sir David and Lady Scott. London: Sotheby's (19 November 2008: lot 69), 122-23.
Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott. London: Sotheby's, 2008, 54.
Pointon, Marcia. William Dyce 1806-1864, A Critical Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Staley, Allen. "William Dyce and Outdoor Naturalism." The Burlington Magazine CV (November 1963): 470-77.
Thomson, Emily Hope. William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, cat. 46, 168 & 170.
Created 22 December 2024