Louis Bosworth Hurt 1856-1929

Sothebys, Gleneagles, 28th August 1990, lot 769;

Private collection

Louis Bosworth Hurt is best known for his evocative paintings of placid and beautiful West Highland cattle. Sunshine and Shower is a dramatic departure from his usual subject, depicting the confrontation of two majestic stags amid the dramatic setting of the rugged highlands, with their mysterious mists tumbling over heather-clad mountain slopes and glimmering streams of iced spring-water meandering through gorse and rocks. A stag with imperious antlers stands amongst his harem of hinds, defiant against a rival who has encroached upon his territory. Bosworth Hurt's poetic paintings capture the very essence of the beauty of the wilder parts of Scotland, as though affectionately remembered from a pleasant stroll, picnic or a day stalking. Unlike other artists who painted the Highlands as awesome and foreboding, Bosworth Hurt’s landscapes have the power of dramatic suggestion, but also with a truly sensitive touch and feeling for beauty which make his painting so delightful and engaging.

Hurt was born in Ashbourne in Derbyshire in 1856 and though he did from time to time paint on the Derbyshire moors, he preferred the wilderness of the northern Highlands. A prolific painter, Hurt exhibited thirteen paintings from 1881 at the Royal Academy in London and twenty-six at the Royal Society of Artists on Suffolk Street. His paintings were predominantly of Highland cattle, or occasionally sheep, and the titles of exhibits at the Royal Academy include The Silence of the Woods, By Peaceful Loch and Mist Wreathed Hill and In a Northern Glen. Examples of his work can be found in several public collections, including Manchester City Art Gallery and Reading City Art Gallery. Louis Bosworth Hurt’s wife was also a painter and exhibited a view In Glen Shiel, Rossshire at the Royal Society of Artists in 1886 from the Hurt’s home in Derbyshire.

When Sunshine and Shower last appeared in the salerooms, at Gleneagles in 1990, it broke the auction record for a work by Louis Bosworth Hurt, a record which was unbroken for almost a decade.