Joseph Farquharson R.A. 1846-1935

Summertime is an unusual work for Joseph Farquharson, an artist known for his wintry landscapes of sheep and shepherds in blizzard blown wildernesses, rather than pretty young ladies reading in the summer sunshine.

Although better-known for his paintings of sheep in the snow, Farquharson also painted a series of paintings of life in Egypt following several trips to North Africa in the 1880s and 1890s and in the early 1920s he painted several pictures of his beautiful garden in Finzean in Scotland. He had inherited the title of laird of Finzean on the death of his brother and maintained the flower garden which became the subject for a series of remarkable paintings of the flower-beds and pergolas heavily laden with rose blooms. It is likely that Summertime was painted in the woodland around the Finzean estate in Aberdeenshire, which were felled after WWII and replanted in recent years. Finzean lies about twelve miles from Balmoral and Queen Alexandra was said to have visited Farquharson’s studio several times. The gardens were described by Archdeacon Sinclair as ‘delightful gardens, comprising lawns, herbaceous borders, and long arched colonnades of roses in ever direction. (Archdeacon William MacDonald Sinclair, The Art of Joseph Farquharson, A.R.A., special Christmas edition of The Art Journal, 1912, pg. 8)

Joseph Farquharson was the twelfth laid of Finzean, and there had been lairds of the state since 1579. Proud of his heritage and nationality, Joseph had the entire house carpeted in the family tartan and held many lively parties at Finzean. Most of Joseph’s childhood had been spent at Finzean, then in the possession of his grand-father Francis, an amateur artist whose studio young Joseph was allowed to use at weekends. Many of Farquharson’s earliest pictures were of woodland scenes and often depicted children, for example A Walk Through the Woods and Babes in the Wood of the early 1870s.

The most striking quality of Summertime is Farquharson’s masterly command of light and suggests that the picture was painted out of doors. Farquharson had tried wherever possible to paint plein air even amid freezing blizzards. This was a practice he had learned whilst a student in Carolus-Duran’s studio in Paris when painting trips were made to the forests of Fontainebleu. Duran had extolled the virtues of painting out of doors and this was to have a profound effect on Farquharson and his approach to work.

It is possible that Summertime depicts Farquharson’s wife Violet Hay and the informality of the painting supports this. Violet was the daughter of a neighbouring estate owner and several years younger than Joseph. They married in 1914 and in 1918 when his brother Robert died, Joseph became the laird and he and Violet moved to Finzean. A drawing of Violet picking flowers in the gardens at Finzean is in one of the many volumes of sketches by Farquharson which he made to record his ouevre.