Joseph Farquharson R.A. 1846-1935

'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.' (W M Sinclair, The Art of Joseph Farquharson, A.R.A., special Christmas edition of Art Annual, 1913, pp. 1-2)

Walter Sickert compared Farquharson favourably to Courbet, prefering the Scotsman's work 'Farquharson's extraordinary virtuosity has been developed by experience, but it arises certainly because he is thinking of telling his story... The subject is the very raison d'etre of the picture. Bloomsbury will perhaps tell you that it is wrong... Fortunately the writ of Bloomsbury does not run in the North of Scotland' (W. R. Sickert, A Free House, 1947. p. 204, first published in an article for the Daily Telegraph, 7 April 1926, entitled 'Snow Piece and Palette-Knife').