DOI issue:
No. 196 (July, 1909)
DOI article:Eddington, A.: William McTaggart, R. S. A., painter of sea and land
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20967#0110
William McTaggart, R.S.A.
at the same time as J. C. Wintour and Hugh
Cameron, both of them artists who afterwards
achieved distinction. During this period Mr. McTag-
gart showed the pre-Raphaelite influence which
is very evident in his Past and Present, painted the
year after he gained associate rank. This influence
was not only manifest in technique, but in theme,
and for some years afterwards there was a marked
choice of serious subjects for his genre pictures.
Even late in the ’sixties he continued to show this
tendency, though along with it there was develop-
ment to a much broader and freer style. His
diploma work, Dora, which hangs in the Scottish
National Gallery, has passages of colour and
breadth of treatment in the landscape that indicate
the artistic growth thar was soon to free the
painter from all traditional and scholastic restraint.
But the exhibited Dora was not a first impression.
It was symptomatic of the painter’s mental attitude
that his first choice was to illustrate Dora’s failure
and so he represents her after she had sat with
the child in the cornfield till the farmer had passed
unseeing, and “the sun fell and all the land was
dark.” The pathos and mystery of this version of
Dora appealed strongly to Paul Chalmers, whose
imaginative spirit was more akin to the sadder
cadences of Nature than her joyous moods.
Other pictures that show the serious side are
Enoch Arden and The Wreck of the Pfesperus, both
of them works which took a strong hold on the
popular imagination, though probably if any picture
were to be selected as that which contributed more
than any other to draw public attention to his
work it would be his Willie Baird, inspired by
Robert Buchanan’s poem. These works all in-
dicate a period of his mental and artistic develop-
ment when humanity was the dominant note with
its passion, tragedy and pathos, a period which
“port seton”
BY WILLIAM MCTAGGART
at the same time as J. C. Wintour and Hugh
Cameron, both of them artists who afterwards
achieved distinction. During this period Mr. McTag-
gart showed the pre-Raphaelite influence which
is very evident in his Past and Present, painted the
year after he gained associate rank. This influence
was not only manifest in technique, but in theme,
and for some years afterwards there was a marked
choice of serious subjects for his genre pictures.
Even late in the ’sixties he continued to show this
tendency, though along with it there was develop-
ment to a much broader and freer style. His
diploma work, Dora, which hangs in the Scottish
National Gallery, has passages of colour and
breadth of treatment in the landscape that indicate
the artistic growth thar was soon to free the
painter from all traditional and scholastic restraint.
But the exhibited Dora was not a first impression.
It was symptomatic of the painter’s mental attitude
that his first choice was to illustrate Dora’s failure
and so he represents her after she had sat with
the child in the cornfield till the farmer had passed
unseeing, and “the sun fell and all the land was
dark.” The pathos and mystery of this version of
Dora appealed strongly to Paul Chalmers, whose
imaginative spirit was more akin to the sadder
cadences of Nature than her joyous moods.
Other pictures that show the serious side are
Enoch Arden and The Wreck of the Pfesperus, both
of them works which took a strong hold on the
popular imagination, though probably if any picture
were to be selected as that which contributed more
than any other to draw public attention to his
work it would be his Willie Baird, inspired by
Robert Buchanan’s poem. These works all in-
dicate a period of his mental and artistic develop-
ment when humanity was the dominant note with
its passion, tragedy and pathos, a period which
“port seton”
BY WILLIAM MCTAGGART