The McEwan Gallery
 Royal Deeside
44th Annual Summer Exhibition Opens Sunday 5 August 2pm
Tuesday–Saturday 11am–5pm Sunday 2–5pm
Dorothy at 90
The pictures are in oil unless otherwise stated. All items are for sale on receipt of the brochure, with more online
S Front Cover: 1. Daniel Hermann Anton Melbye (Danish 1818–1875) Shipping off Helgoland sgd and dated 1863 63x100ʹʹ
DOROTHY McEWAN (1925–2017)
ome of you might not be aware that my mother, Dorothy, passed away on December 19 last year, peacefully at home. She established the Gallery in the 1960s and was at her desk in Glengarden from 1975 to 2016, when her health began to fail. She enjoyed welcoming clients from all over, discussing paintings in her
gentle manner, and she leaves behind a roomful of goodwill and sweet memories. As her longtime partner in the business, I continue to run the Gallery in the way she would approve and look forward to welcoming you all throughout the year. A full Tribute can be seen at www.mcewangallery.com/about
Dorothy McEwan Rhodesian Boy c1959 painted during her years in Africa, a similar work by her is in the National Gallery of Zimbabwe
2. George Melvin Rennie (1874–1953) Inverey Village near Braemar 11x17ʹʹ
4. George Melvin Rennie Braemar from the Queen’s Drive 11x17ʹʹ 3. John Mitchell (1837–1926) Where the Gelder meets the Dee Watercolour 18x24ʹʹ
6. Benjamin J Ottewell (1847–1937) Mountain Landscape with Heather Watercolour sgd and dated 1910 24x36ʹʹ
5. Howard Butterworth (Contemporary) The Dee near Balmoral 9x13½ʹʹ
7. William Ellis Barrington-Browne (1908–1985) On the Beat 15½x19½ʹʹ
8. Peter Howson (Contemporary) Running Madonna Pastel 24x18ʹʹ
9. Martin Copeland (Contemporary) The Mercury Cycle Co 32x28ʹʹ 12. Richard Adams (Contemporary) The Fishing Boat Watercolour 22x22ʹʹ 11. Alison Ewan (Contemporary) Harbour Haven Mixed Media 15x19ʹʹ
10. David M Bowers (US Contemporary) The Visionary 13½x9ʹʹ 13. Alison Ewan Blue Toon Mixed Media 11x14½ʹʹ
15. Joseph Dixon Clark (1849–1944) View of a Castle 7x9¾ʹʹ (unframed)
14. Daniel van der Putten (Contemporary) Summer Evening, Needon 15¼x19¾ʹʹ
17. Struan Robertson (fl 1903–1918) Fisherfolk on the Quayside on a Dutch Canal sgd and dated 1910 25¼x30¼ʹʹ
16. Joseph Dixon Clark Cattle at Sunset 6x8ʹʹ (unframed)
18. Alfred Morris (fl 1853–1896) Sheep in a Landscape sgd & dated 1878 49½x39¾ʹʹ
19. William McTaggart RSA RSW (1835–1910) Machrimone Mill Watercolour 13¾x20ʹʹ
20. William McTaggart RSA RSW Children Playing on the Beach Watercolour dated 1886 13¾x20ʹʹ
22. Patrick Downie RSW (1854–1945) North Sea Fishers Watercolour 8¼x11¼ʹʹ 21. Mary McMurtrie (1902– 2003) Rosehips and Snowberries Watercolour 13½x10¼ʹʹ
23. Mary McMurtrie Spring Flowers Watercolour 11½x10¾ʹʹ
24–29. Feliks Topolski RA Inauguration of His Holiness Pope John Paul II set of 10 sgd ltd prints, no 20/850 16x20½ʹʹ (in folder)
30–33. Feliks Topolski RA (1907–1989) Inns of Court Set of four ltd edtn prints 9/275 26½x20ʹʹ
34. After Arthur Pan (1894–1983) Sir Winston Churchill Print 17½x22ʹʹ 37. Circle of John Vanderbank (1694–1739) Portrait of Mundy Musters of Colwick 49½x40ʹʹ
36. John James Masquerier RA (1778–1855) Half length Portrait of Miss Bristow (Mrs Joseph Grimaldi) 29x24ʹʹ 40. Circle of Thomas Gainsborough (c1765) Portrait of a Lady in Blue Dress 28½x24½ʹʹ
35. Delphin Enjolras (French 1857–1945) Portrait of a Young Girl with Dog Pastel 28x22ʹʹ
38–39. James Ferguson (1710–1776) James Hossack of Inverness and his wife Miss Cuthbert of Castle Hill c1745 (pair) Plumbago on vellum 3x2½ʹʹ oval
41. Joseph Farquharson RA (1846–1935) Evening’s Last and Sweetest Hour 40x60ʹʹ, frame size 52x72ʹʹ Exhibited Royal Academy 1906
Lion Feijen
(Dutch Contemporary)
43. Blue Can with Bowl of Tomatoes 8x15¼ʹʹ
42. Blue Jar with Pomegranates 19¾x19¾ʹʹ 47. Wild Apples in Blue Bowl 5x12ʹʹ
44. Antique Wine Bottle with Grapes 11½x7½ʹʹ 45. Summer Jay 5x7ʹʹ
46. Tikka Pot with Apples 10½x14½ʹʹ
48. Seascape 8x19½ʹʹ
49. Early Morning at Richmond Bridge 12x15¾ʹʹ 51. Winter Light, Wengen Oil on board 16x12ʹʹ
50. Redentore Morning Mist 12x15¾ʹʹ
Daisy Sims Hilditch (Contemporary)
52. Evening Light, Kensington Palace 12x16ʹʹ
53. Afternoon Light in the Boboli Gardens 12x10ʹʹ
Gary Komarin
(US Contemporary)
54. Cake Pink on Green 23x30ʹʹ
55. Cake Blue on Dusky Blue 23x30ʹʹ
56. She Watched the Night Revealing 45x48ʹʹ
58. Cake White on Pink 23x30ʹʹ
59. Cake Brown on Orange 23x30ʹʹ
57. The Caretaker’s Cottage 72x60ʹʹ
Gary Komarin (US Contemporary) Born New York in 1951, Komarin studied with the seminal New York School painter Philip Guston at Boston University. Recipient of the Joan Mitchell Prize in Painting, the NY Foundation for the Arts Grant in Painting, the Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship in Painting etc, he has held professorships at a host of universities. A master of Post-Painterly Abstraction, Gary Komarin has been at the forefront of contemporary art with a bold and colourful style recognized by art collectors worldwide, and applauded by museum curators and art critics alike. His work is represented in museums throughout the world, such as Musée Mougins, Mougins Fance, Musée Kiyoharu Japan, Galeria d’Arte Moderna Rome, Montclair Art Museum NY, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego etc. Private collections worldwide include those of John McEnroe, Candace Bushnell, Nicole Miller, Marian Boesky, the Kennedy family, Horiuchi Collection in Tokyo & New York (over 100 works), Dick Cavett, Tim Jefferies and Gisep Biert in Zurich et al. In 1996 Komarin exhibited at a pivotal Exhibition in New York with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Philip Guston. He has shown alongside de Kooning, Koons, Motherwell and Joan Miro, and Komarin’s strong and vibrant colour sense has been mentioned in the same breath as the colossus Mark Rothko, with whom he also exhibited.
60. Blue on Crème with White Oil on paper 50x24ʹʹ
Post-painterly abstraction is a style that favours openness, risk taking, and clarity, as opposed to the dense painterly surfaces that are apparent in abstract expressionism; Komarin’s style offers a freshness of approach that taps into the present zeitgeist. “My paintings proceed without preconception. I paint to find out what it is that I am going to paint. I think of myself as a stagehand who sets up the conditions necessary for drama to unfold. The very best paintings are most often those that fail the most. Once a painting has achieved a life of its own, when it speaks back to you as a painter, this is a good place to be. For me, the best paintings are those that paint themselves.” [Gary Komarin]
61. Who is Hercules and why are You Calling Him? 28x22ʹʹ
‘Komarin is a colourist of the highest mark – his instinct for whimsy and subtlety rendered through pigment is unparalleled by any artist making abstract paintings today, and perhaps only equalled by Rothko’s infamously reverberating palette.’ [Robert Otto Epstein NY 2009]
64. Scottish School c1890 Portrait of Old Tom Morris 17x11ʹʹ
62. Peter Paillou Snr (1757–1831) Self-portrait 14½x12ʹʹ 63. Gerard Burns (Contemporary) The Icon No 3 Oil and gold leaf 20x20ʹʹ 65. Juan Jr Ramirez (US Contemporary) Portrait of a Gent 36x24ʹʹ
67. Juan Jr Ramirez (US Contemporary) Head Study Oil on panel 18x14ʹʹ
66. Daniel Sherrin (1868–1940) Sunset on the Sea 16x40ʹʹ
70. Elena Vilkova (Russian Contemporary) Farm near snowy Sarouska 20x27¾ʹʹ 68. Autumn Plenitude 24x27½ʹʹ
69. Ostashkov Lake 19¾x24ʹʹ
71. Monet’s Lily Pond 15¾x19¾ʹʹ
73. Elena Vilkova Broken down Shed 23¾x30½ʹʹ
72. Spring Still Life 24x27½ʹʹ
Anna Davydchenko
(Russian Contemporary) 74. Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 15¾x19¾ʹʹ
75. Prayer before an Icon 19¾x24ʹʹ
Andrej Vilkov
(Russian Contemporary)
76. Clouds 12x16½ʹʹ
77. Haystacks 17¾x27½ʹʹ
78. Farm near Sarouska 19¾x23¾ʹʹ
79. Grandpa’s Visit 24x31½ʹʹ 82. Venice 18x23¾ʹʹ
80. Stocking up for Winter 15½x23½ʹʹ 83. Sunny Winter’s Day 13x19ʹʹ 81. New Snow 24x39ʹʹ
84. Full Moon 7x12ʹʹ
85. Alan Hayman (Contemporary) Loch Maree Acrylic 6½x14ʹʹ 86. Carolyn Rockwood (Contemporary) White Winter Flowers and Berries Mixed Media 15x15ʹʹ
88. Alan Hayman Sunset Acrylic 12x24ʹʹ 90. Carolyn Rockwood Shell Sand Hebrides Mixed Media 18x24ʹʹ
87. Carolyn Rockwood Midsummer Poppies Mixed Media 11½x11½ʹʹ 89. John Black (1960–2017) Running Fox Charcoal and coloured chalk 12¼x24½ʹʹ 91. George Melvin Rennie (1874–1953) Ballater from the Dee 12½x19½ʹʹ
94–95. John Aubrey (Isabella Margaret Chalmers) (1909–1985) Street Games and Pastimes c1969 7x9ʹʹ set of 11 watercolours mounted in five frames 92. Andrew Hutchinson (Contemporary) Portrait of a Stag 15½x11½ʹʹ 96. Andrew Hutchinson Portrait of a Munsterlander 7½x5½ʹʹ
93. Andrew Hutchinson Portrait of a Grey Horse Acrylic 5x3½ʹʹ
97. Stewart Morrison (Contemporary) Stonehaven Pen and w/c postcard sketch 4x5¾ʹʹ
99. Stewart Morrison Gourdon Harbour Pen and w/c postcard sketch 4½x6½ʹʹ
98. Stewart Morrison Winter at Catterline Pen and w/c postcard sketch 4¼x5½ʹʹ
100. Stewart Morrison Todd Head Light near Catterline Pen and w/c postcard sketch 4x6ʹʹ
101. Joseph Crawhall RSW (1861–1913) Study of Swans Charcoal 8x10½ʹʹ
104. Joseph Crawhall RSW Two Macaws Charcoal 10¼x6¾ʹʹ
102. Archibald Thorburn (1860–1935) Mouse Studies Monogram Ink 9½x11¾ʹʹ
103. Archibald Thorburn Otter Studies Monogram Ink and watercolour 8¼x13¾ʹʹ
105. James McBey (1883–1959) Marrakech Watercolour dated 1948 16¾x21ʹʹ
106. Archibald Thorburn Grouse on the Hill Pencil 8¾x6¾ʹʹ 109. Archibald Thorburn From the Shore, Covesea 1913 7½x12ʹʹ
107. Archibald Thorburn Calling Pencil 5x7½ʹʹ
108. Rob Parkin (Contemporary) The Gathering Pencil 12x46ʹʹ
110. Thomas Gainsborough RA (1727–1788) A Country House surrounded by Trees c1780 Black chalk heightened with white chalk, with touches of grey wash on laid Whatman paper 11⅛x15ʹʹ Collector’s mark bottom right: SCIPIO PROVENANCE: Henry Scipio Reitlinger (1882–1950); his sale, Sotheby’s 27 January 1954, lot 141 bt Squire Gallery (£12); private collection LITERATURE: H. S. Reitlinger, Old Master Drawings: A Handbook for Amateur Collectors, London 1922, p. 173, pl. 64; Mary Woodall, Gainsborough’s Drawings, London 1939, p. 125, no. 268; John Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, 2 vols, London 1970, p. 259 Thomas Gainsborough has always been considered one of the greatest draughtsmen of eighteenth-century Europe. Approximately eleven hundred drawings have been identified and they range from rapid small-scale sketches recording landscape details to finished presentation drawings that were given to friends.2 The motif of the country house appears in paintings around 1770 and a decade later he returned to the subject in a number of drawings.³ The fictive nature of the architecture derives from the classical buildings that appear in works by the seventeenth century Franco-Italian artist, Gaspard Dughet.4 The houses have become anglicized with the odd chimney stack added to hint at the country’s weather but, although there have been attempts to identify the topography, the views are purely imaginary.5 His purpose was to shift the emphasis of a composition from figures to hard-edged buildings as he enjoyed juxtaposing them against the softer forms of the surrounding foliage. There are two versions of this particular drawing and John Hayes wrongly assumed that the Reitlinger version was a copy of the better known drawing now in a British private collection that descended until the 1990s in the family of the artist’s sister, Susannah Gardiner.6 This newly discovered drawing under discussion was previously owned by the distinguished collector Henry Reitlinger who first published the sheet in 1922. The handling of the chalks and the energy of the marks confirm the attribution to Gainsborough. There are telling differences between the two sheets that show a development between them which suggest that the Reitlinger drawing is the earlier of the two. The urn finial shaped like a boat on the pillar in front of the house becomes a stone ball in the Gardiner version, the figure striding up the hill
towards the house is more prominent and the lamb beneath the tree in the centre is less clearly defined. Each feature suggests that the artist is honing details of his design to give the drawing greater structure and emphasis. This sheet shows Gainsborough’s characteristic grace of composition. As he wrote to his friend the musician, William Jackson, ‘one part of a Picture ought to be like the first part of a Tune that you can guess what follows’, and his intuitive handling of the media and careful arrangement of elements in this drawing is rarely equalled.7 Hugh Belsey July 2018 1. The watermark is a crowned shield containing a fleur-de-lis with an interlaced W at the bottom. 2. 1098 drawings have been catalogued and a number of other sheets have been identified in the last ten years. This drawing is amongst those newly identified drawings (H. Belsey, ‘A Second Supplement to John Hayes’s The Drawings by Thomas Gainsborough’, Master Drawings, XLVI (4), December 2008, p. 427).
3. Country houses are most prominent in two paintings. An unfinished canvas presently on loan to the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida is dated by John Hayes c. 1768–71 and he dates the other c. 1774–77. This abraded painting is last recorded on the London art market in about 2000 (J. Hayes, The Landscapes of Thomas Gainsborough, 2 vols., 1982, pp. 210–41 (96) repr. and pp. 463–65 (116) repr.). 4. J. Hayes, ‘Gainsborough and the Gaspardesque’, Burlington Magazine, CXII, May 1970, pp. 308, 310–11. 5. An inscription on the mount in a nineteenth century hand identifies the building as ‘Steele’s house, Hampstead’. This presumably refers to the house on Hampstead Lane owned by Sir Richard Steele, the early eighteenth-century Irish playwright and politician. The house was popularized by David Lucas’ print after a painting by John Constable and this must have prompted the misguided identification. 6. John Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, 2 vols., London 1970, p. 259, no. 654. 7. The quotation comes from a letter to Jackson dated to February 1786 (J. Hayes, The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, New Haven and London 2002, p. 71, no. 42).
111–112. Chinese School 19thC Portraits of a Man and Woman (pair) Watercolour 18x11ʹʹ 115. David West RSW Fishers w/c 13x17½ʹʹ 116. Alan Hayman (Contemporary) Golden Eagle Acrylic 24x20ʹʹ 114. A Middlemas (fl 1895–1902) Canty Bay, N Berwick 12x18ʹʹ
117. Lion Feijen (Contemporary) Waves 11½x31½ʹʹ
113. David West RSW (1868–1936) Cairnbulg Castle 16x27ʹʹ
118. Joseph Farquharson RA (1846–1935) The Rose Garden, Finzean 14½x11¼ʹʹ 119. Mark William Langlois (1848–1924) The Politicians 21x17¼ʹʹ 122. Louis Bosworth Hurt Highland Burn 12x17½ʹʹ
121. Mary Armour RSA RSW (1902– 2000) Still Life of Flowers with Bowl of Fruit 25x25ʹʹ
120. Joseph Farquharson RA Fishing in the Gloaming 16x12ʹʹ 123. John Brett (1830–1902) Belle Tout Lighthouse, Beachy Head Oil on panel 8x11¾ʹʹ
124. John Pettie RA HRSA (1839–1893) Treason 33x58ʹʹ Exhibited Royal Academy 1867
The McEwan Gallery • Ballater (on A939) • Aberdeenshire AB35 5UB tel: 013397 55429 • mcewangallery.com • art@mcewangallery.com