Samuel John Lamorna Birch

Acquired from the artist by the grandmother of the present owner, thence by descent

Original canvas. There is a faint vertical line running halfway through centre of composition which appears to relate to vertical stretcher bar. The surface may benefit from a light clean otherwise the work appears in good overall condition with lovely passages of impasto. Under ultraviolet light some areas flouresce but there do not appear to any signs of retouching. Held under glass in a gilt plaster frame, unexamined out of frame.
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In the 1920s Birch began his series of large Scottish river landscapes. The most important sequence of pictures he undertook, they helped secure his election to the Royal Academy in 1926. An enthusiastic fisherman, they also coincided with his annual summer fishing trips to the Scottish Highlands.

The present work was likely executed circa 1930, when Birch moved further west from his usual fishing spot on the river Deveron - that summer dried up due to a heatwave - to explore the Spey. Painting the river near Grantown, Birch noted that if he ever went to heaven he would surely find himself there, 'with the heather and woods backed by great mountains, the birds singing, the wind blowing and the fish rising' (Austin Wormleighton, A Painter Laureate: Lamorna Birch and his Circle (Sansom & Company, 1995, p.180).