Scottish genre art

Scottish genre art is the depiction of everyday life in Scotland, or by Scottish artists, emulating the genre art of Netherlands painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Common themes included markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes.

The tradition was founded in Scotland in the late eighteenth century by David Allan, who moved from classical and mythological themes to scenes of everyday life, including his most famous work Illustrations of the Gentle Shepherd. As a result he earned the title of "the Scottish Hogarth". By the end of the eighteenth century genre art had become a Scottish speciality. The tradition was successfully taken up by David Wilkie, who was one of the most internationally influential artists of this day.

Scottish painters influenced by Wilkie included John Burnet, Alexander George Fraser and Walter Geikie. A younger generation that took genre painting into the late nineteenth century included Erskine Nicol and the brothers John and Thomas Faed. Genre art was a major influence on early photography, which developed rapidly in Scotland with figures such as Hill & Adamson.

Painting and drawing

Eighteenth century

By the end of the eighteenth century genre art had become a Scottish speciality, with artists including Alexander Carse (c. 1770–1843) and Walter (or William) Weir (d. 1865) following Allan into the form.^[3] Carse was probably a student of Allan and his watercolour of Oldhamstocks Fair of 1796, the year of Allan's death, can be seen as a tribute to the older artist. His most notable works in the tradition were Leith Races, Return from Leith Races (both 1794) and Visit of the Country Relations (1812), which pioneered the sociological study of urban and rural life, anticipating later work by David Wilkie, with whom he would be a competitor. Both Carse and Wilkie exhibited paintings with the title The Penny Wedding in 1818. Weir produced two drawings illustrating "Hallowe'en" (1816) by Robert Burns.^[4]

Early nineteenth century

The tradition was taken up most successfully by David Wilkie (1785–1841), often noted as the founder of the British tradition of genre painting.

Less well known contemporaries of Wilkie that pursued genre art included William Home Lizars (1788–1859), who was a student with Wilkie at the Trustees Academy. He exhibited two genre paintings in 1811: A Scotch Wedding and The Reading of the Will, which demonstrate humour and seem to relate to the early work of Wilkie, who painted his own version of the later in 1820. Shortly after this Lizars turned to engraving for a living.^[8] William Shiels (1785–1857) is mainly known as an animal painter, but he also created genre art. James Howe (1780–1836) also undertook genre art with an agricultural dimension. Most influenced by Wilkie were his close friends John Burnet (1784–1868), William Allan (1782–1850), Alexander George Fraser (1786–1865) and Andrew Geddes (1783–1844). The first three were all contemporaries of Wilkie at the Academy, while Geddes was self-taught. Burnet and Fraser worked closely with Wilkie in London, while Geddes and Allan stayed in touch with him throughout his career. Allan became Master of the Trustees Academy and later President of Royal Scottish Academy and so was able to pass on Wilkie's influence. He produced genre paintings including Christmas Eve (undated), which is a variation on Wilkie's A Penny Wedding.^[9]

Other contemporaneous painters influenced by Wilkie included

George Harvey's (1806–76) early work included minor genre paintings derived from Wilkie, before he followed him into historical art.^[12] Like Harvey, John Phillip (1817–67) began by creating sentimental Scottish rural images, among them Scottish Fair (1848), before his first trip to Spain led him into creating Spanish genre images such as Letter Writer of Seville (1853) and The Dying Contrabandista (1858). He produced single figure genre pictures such as The Spinning Wheel, but also large set-pieces, such as his most famous painting, La Gloria (1864), which shows a Spanish wake for a dead child.^[13]

A younger generation that took genre painting into the late nineteenth century included

In photography, genre art was normally the recreation of scenes and tableaux using paid or amateur actors to reproduce scenes.^[16] Genre art was a major influence on early photography, which developed rapidly in Scotland.^[16] Pioneering photographers from Scotland included chemist Robert Adamson (1821–48) and artist David Octavius Hill (1821–48), who as Hill & Adamson formed the first photographic studio in Scotland at Rock House in Edinburgh in 1843. Their output of around 3,000 calotype images in four years are considered some of the first and finest artistic uses of photography.^[17] Images produced by them that were influenced by genre art included their Edinburgh Ale (1843–46), where the poses of three drinking companions are based on scenes from Dutch art.^[16] Adamson trained Thomas Roger (1833–88) of St. Andrews, who was one of the first commercial photographers and beside commercial portraits, produced many genre style compositions.^[18] Other pioneers included Thomas Annan (1829–87), whose photographs of the Glasgow slums were among the first to use the medium as a social record.^[17] In the 1850s amateur photographer Mary Jane Matherson took her camera outside to create compositions that can be described as genre art, including A Picnic in the Glen and An Angler at Rest.^[19]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Scottish genre art.

• Scottish art

Notes