Joseph Farquharson, R.A.

The McEwan Gallery, Glengarden:
Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh;
Private Collection

STRUCTURE The canvas has been lined. PAINT SURFACE There are some very minor signs of frame abrasion to the extreme edges. There is some very minor surface dirt in places. Otherwise in good condition. UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT There is a small patch of retouching towards the lower left edge (just above the fence to the upper left of the flock of sheep) possibly relating to some old damage. There are one or two tiny spots of cosmetic retouching to the extreme edges and elsewhere. FRAME Held in a decorative gold painted composite frame with some minor loss to the moulding to the centre of the extreme upper edge.
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'... for ingenuity of painting, and for the power to convey the illusion of sunlight on snow, darkened by the shadows and the leafless trees behind which the sun is setting, this landscape is a tour de force. Mr. Farquharson's vision of nature is always interesting, and he is one of the few members of the Academy who resist the shackles of conventionalism' (Academy, 9 May 1903, p. 467)

The Shortening Winter's Day is Near at Close is one of the most important and impressive paintings by Joseph Farquharson, an artist who is as much associated with the depiction of winter scenes as John Atkinson Grimshaw is with autumn nocturnes. The primary version of the composition is at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight. The primary version of The Shortening Winter's Day is near a Close (Lady Lever Art Gallery) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1903. It is not known when the present replica was painted but it is probable that it was soon after the exhibition of 1903 and likely to have been painted to satisfy a patron that had been disappointed not to be able to purchase the exhibited painting that Lever had secured through Agnew's when it was on the walls of the Academy. Another, smaller version (51 by 76 cm), was with the Richard Green Gallery in 1972 and reproduced in Country Life on June 1 that year. Often artists painted replicas for engravers to work from when the original painting was not available and it is possible that one of these replicas served such a purpose; a highly popular print of The Shortening Winter's Day is near a Close sold in the many thousands by the publisher Frost & Reed.

This painting conveys with dexterity and poetry the elements that make his work so enduringly popular and respected. The wintry landscape with its deep drifts of snow and meandering flocks of sheep with the rosy hues of dawning or gloaming light are the signature elements of Farquharson's greatest works. Although Farquharson sometimes deviated from his depictions of sheep in the snow, it was these images around which visitors to the Royal Academy exhibitions crowded. Prints of winter scenes by Farquharson were sold in their thousands by the likes of Frost and Reed who printed over thirty different engravings after work by Farquharson, including The Shortening Winter's Day is Near at Close. 

The moody atmosphere of Farquharson's paintings could not have been captured in the contemporary photographs of icy woodlands that frequently appeared in various photographic competitions and adorned the pages of The Magazine of Art. Farquharson knew his genre intimately and had often painted out among the blizzards and the snow drifts, wrapped up against the cold and absorbed wholly in his love of painting and of capturing the subtle nuances of light upon glittering snow. 'There is not one of Farquharson's pastoral landscapes which is not treated from the contemplative or poetic point of view: the poetry of snow either in its suggestion of desolation, or of the endurance of peasantry life, or the exquisite beauty of rare tints in the sun or moon on deep snow surfaces and seen through leafless trees... and the varied voices with which Nature elevates us from the prosaic, the commonplace and the ugly in her countless moods.' (Archdeacon William Macdonald Sinclair, D.D., 'The Art of Joseph Farquharson, A.R.A.', Christmas edition of The Art Annual, 1913, pp. 1-2)

Archdeacon Sinclair concludes his assessment of Farquharson's career with admiration for Farquharson's ability to convey the drama and beauty when weather and lighting combine to display nature at its most impressive; 'Throughout the long and pleasant list there is a sense of reverence for the secrets of Nature, sympathy for her various moods, joy in her winds and storms, sunshine and moonlit mysteries, with the ready command of experience and craftsmanship, and the enthusiasm of the devout lover.' (Ibid, Sinclair, p. 30)