‘In a few lines he could sketch an animal, making it more recognisable than the most candid camera could do...’
A Mallard Rising must surely be considered one of Joseph Crawhall's finest works. Painted around 1908, when Crawhall was at the height of his artist career, the painting depicts a mallard duck in the almost imperceptible moment it pushes off from the water and takes to flight. That Crawhall is able to so accurately and naturally capture this moment is quite incredible.
'Anyone who has tried to follow the action of a mallard's wings when the bird rises from the water will realise the difficulty in seeing how they are formed and move. But thanks to his extraordinary eyesight Crawhall could record the details in his mind, and there they might stay for months before a sudden impulse would force him to paint the picture. The watery background to the bird, though only touched in with a varying strength of body-colour, scintillates with transparency and light.'
The present work is executed on a relatively coarse piece of linen, in contrast to the finer linen sometimes used, for example in, Cock Pheasant with Foliage and Berries (lot 205). The linen has absorbed the carefully applied touches of gouache and body-colour to present a translucent and fluid appearance. The mallard itself fills the aperture of the linen sheet and there is a definite and strong diagonal composition which serves to further emphasise the power and grace of the bird as it rises, leaving the lightest of ripples on the water's surface in the lower right hand corner.
When the work appeared at auction in April 1935, with the sale of Major J. A. Coats portion of his father William Allan Coats collection, the Daily Telegraph recorded that a series of Crawhall's, 'remarkably graphic drawings evoked the most enthusiastic bouts of bidding, culminating in one of 1,150 gns for the subject of a mallard rising from the water...A band of Scottish dealers fought for the Crawhall drawings...Thus Messrs. J. B. Bennett and Sons, of Glasgow, made the herioc bid of 1,159 gns mentioned.' (quoted in, Vivien Hamilton, Joseph Crawhall 1861-1913, One of the Glasgow Boys, Glasgow, 1990, pp. 99-100). That the work attained the highest price paid for any of the Crawhall works in the sale is testament to its sheer quality and appeal.
A Mallard Rising has an extensive and illustrious exhibition history having been first lent to an exhibition at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London in 1909, the year after it was painted. It also appeared at the Empire Exhibition in Glagow in 1938 and at both the Royal Academy and The National Gallery in London. It remains one of Crawhall's greatest achievements and conveys the incredible skill he had at rendering animals in such a complex and unforgiving medium. Writing after Crawhall's death, the great Scottish painter Sir James Guthrie, a friend and fellow Glasgow Boy, remarked on Crawhall's artistic mastery:
‘[Crawhall] has always been a consummate artist, the perfection of the means for the end he had in view, the fineness of his instinct for form, colour and design; the rare knowledge of life and movement and the even rarer application of that knowledge to an art of the most exacting sensitiveness and power - these things will always give him a unique place. Such a combination exists in none else known to me and his work throughout has, in my mind, borne the stamp of a master.’