拍品 60
  • 60

赫拉迪奧·麥克羅

估價
200,000 - 300,000 USD
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招標截止

描述

  • Horatio McCulloch
  • 《奧湖旁的基爾亨城堡》
  • 款識:畫家簽名並紀年 H McCulloch 185(4)(左下);紀畫家地址(貼於內框的標籤)
  • 油彩畫布

來源

Acquired from the artist by C. Dunn Young, Esq., iron-bridge maker, of St. Leonard's Edinburgh, May 1854, for £300;
Robert J. Jamieson, by 1901;
By descent to Mrs. Walter Scott of 9 Victoria Crescent, Glasgow and Dame Edith Elphinstone;
Thence by descent until anonymously sold, Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland (sale on the premises), Sotheby's,  2 September 1998, lot 1382, reproduced on front cover of catalogue, where it established a world record price for any Scottish painting (as dated, incorrectly, 1857);
There acquired by the present collector.

展覽

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1854, no. 76 (as Caisteal Chaoil-Chuirn, Loch Awe);
Manchester, Art Treasures Exhibition, 1857, no. 463 (as Loch Awe, lent by C. D. Young);
Glasgow, International Exhibition, 1901, no. 177;
Glasgow, The Western Club, on long term loan from 1924 until the late 1990s.

出版

The Art Journal, 1854, p. 109;
A. Fraser, Scottish Landscape, The Works of Horatio McCulloch RSA, Edinburgh, 1872, pp. 28 and 30.

ENGRAVED:
Engraved by Mr. Forrest; published again in 1881 by the Art Union of Glasgow.

Condition

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This large landscape is in lovely condition. This artist, like many from the midcentury, employs a lot of rich transparent glazes, visible here particularly in the foreground. The fine details throughout the landscape are undamaged. The sky is similarly wonderfully preserved. The painting seems to be visibly dirty. While the work could certainly be hung in its current state, it is also be a picture that would respond very well to careful cleaning. The retouches that have been applied are almost all confined to a few small losses, with one in the mountains to the left of the ruins.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

拍品資料及來源

McCulloch’s landscapes famously capture the grandeur and romantic scenery of the Scottish Highlands.  He showed regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy exhibitions in Edinburgh, and also in Glasgow where he found loyal patrons among that city’s wealthy industrialists. This painting depicts the dramatically situated ruin of Kilchurn Castle, which sits at the head of Loch Awe in Argyllshire and is still, today, one of the most picturesque castles in Scotland. It was the seat of the Campbells of Glenorchy, who later became Marquesses of Breadalbane. The 15th century keep was built by Sir Colin Campbell and further augmented in the 16th and 17th centuries. The castle was last garrisoned during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, and then fell into disrepair.

This work was exhibited in 1854 at the Royal Scottish Academy (see Exhibited), where it was purchased directly from McCulloch by C. Dunn Young, who paid £300, a large sum at that time.1  A review of the exhibition in The Art Journal (see Literature) discussed this work at length: "This is, toto coelo, the best landscape in the rooms, and we question whether it be not the very finest work which its author has ever produced. The subject is a glorious one, in nature, and the aspect under which it is here presented shows how intensely it must have been felt by the artist. The extreme distance is closed by two mountain piles of primitive rock gradually approaching the spectator through a broken and diversified sweep of the tertiary series; between this and the foreground stretches the level peninsula, on the right tongue of which are placed the ruins of the fortress. The distant mountain-mass, painted chiefly under the effect of a dark sky, is magnificently treated; the hollows filled with shadow, the relievo parts the while receiving, through the breaks of the clouds, streams of brilliance which play upon the huge shoulders of the hills, developing the grandeur of their varied forms. The level mid-distance, margined by a bend of the lake, is given with great sweetness; but, after all the crowning beauty of the picture is the foreground, with its sandy and stony hollows fringed with decaying mountain fern, from a mass of which issues a tiny bubbling stream, lighting up the spot and winding out of the picture. The distances are justly proportioned; and in every part the colouring is brilliant and harmonious, and the character of the whole one of forcible and majestic beauty. We think it one of the finest landscape-works every painted."

According to an inscription on the reverse, the pony in the foreground was painted by Gourlay Steel, R.S.A. (1819-1894).

 

1.  See A. Fraser, under Literature: "In 1854 McCulloch painted Caistel Chail-Churn, Loch Awe purchased in the Exhibition of the Academy by Mr C. D. Young for £300 - a long price for a landscape in those days, and the first time McCulloch had received such a sum for one picture."