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| James Archer Summertime, Gloucestershire 1860 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"In 1862 this painting was selected for inclusion in the prestigious International Exhibition in London as an outstanding example of contemporary British art. Archer's masterpiece had been launched at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1860 and was recognised as a consummate achievement of Scottish Pre-Raphaelitism. In particular it confirmed the impact made upon the Scottish vision of nature by John Everett Millais's two paintings The Blind Girl and Autumn Leaves which had been shown in Edinburgh two years earlier. All three pictures are nostalgic in mood, suggesting a poetic analogy between the brevity of childhood and the fragile beauty of summer flowers. Revealingly, one of the first owners of Summertime, Gloucestershire was Sir Thomas Fairbairn, also a major patron and collector of the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Holman Hunt."
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| Joseph Noel Paton The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania 1849 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"Paton's painting is an imaginative interpretation of an incident in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, quarrel over the possession of a changeling (a human child, carried off to the fairy realm and replaced by a fairy child). The main figures are surrounded by a host of smaller fairy creatures, some grotesque, others beautiful, whose supernatural character excused their sensual appearance and behaviour. The painting was judged to be 'picture of the season' when exhibited in Edinburgh in 1850. Later it captivated Lewis Carroll (the author of 'Alice in Wonderland') who counted 165 fairies."
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| Joseph Noel Paton The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania 1847 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"Oberon and Titania stand reunited and are about to resolve the magically induced confusion between the two human lovers shown sleeping apart. Paton painted this as a sequel to his diploma picture of the fairy rulers' quarrel, and again based it on the parallel episode in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. This painting of the reconciliation won a prize in the competition for the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament in 1847. It could be interpreted as an allegory of harmonious government."
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| William Dyce King Lear and the Fool in the Storm ca. 1851 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"During the 1850s Dyce became one of the few established artists to respond creatively to the aesthetic challenges presented by the young Pre-Raphaelites, and also to their hero-worship of Shakespeare. For this enormous illustration of Act III of King Lear (an exceptional choice of subject for Dyce) he adopted the brilliant palette and meticulous figure drawing of the Pre-Raphaelites. Like Holman Hunt and Millais, he attempted to integrate figures painted in the studio into a landscape setting which was almost certainly worked up from sketches made outside."
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| William Dyce The Judgement of Solomon 1836 tempera on paper, mounted on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| William Dyce Francesca da Rimini 1837 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"Dyce acknowledged this as one of the finest paintings he produced in Edinburgh. Its subject was inspired by the ill-fated lovers described by Dante in The Inferno. Francesca, married to an elderly and deformed husband, Gianciotto, read to his younger brother Paolo, and they fell in love. Gianciotto surprised the lovers and murdered them. He was originally included in Dyce's composition. A hint of the tragic outcome is still suggested dramatically by the presence of Gianciotto's disembodied hand at the left, a fortuitous result of the canvas trimmed to remove damage in 1882."
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| John Everett Millais Lost Love after 1859 watercolor British Museum |
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| John Everett Millais Sweetest eyes were ever seen 1881 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| John Singer Sargent Portrait of Dorothy Barnard 1889 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| John Singer Sargent Portrait of Constance Wynne-Roberts (Mrs. Ernest Hills of Redleaf) 1895 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"Mrs. Ernest Hills was the daughter of Evan Wynne-Roberts of The Knowle, Surrey, a barrister and Justice of the Peace. In 1895 she married Frank Ernest Hills (died 1895) of Redleaf House, Penshurst in Kent. The black dress and sombre mood may reflect mourning for the recent death of the sitter's husband."
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| Samuel Peploe Figures (back view) ca. 1910 gouache and black chalk on paper National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Samuel Peploe Peonies ca. 1900-1905 oil on panel National Galleries of Scotland |
"This tiny still life reveals Peploe's interest in Old Master painting, in particular the work of the seventeenth century artists Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn, whose work he saw in Holland in 1895."
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| Samuel Peploe Barra 1903 oil on panel National Galleries of Scotland |
"Peploe first visited the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides in 1894. This work was created during his final trip to the island in 1903. Peploe's early landscape painting was invariably small in scale, painted directly in front of his subject on standard-sized wooden panels. . . . Smearing colours on top of each other without waiting for the paint to dry has resulted in large ares of creamy impasto."
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| Samuel Peploe The black bottle ca. 1905 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Samuel Peploe Still-life with plaster cast ca. 1931 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
"After about 1910 Peploe turned away from portraiture and figure painting in favour of still-lifes and landscapes. By 1920 he had abandoned the impressionistic brushwork of his early years for a much tighter handling, which owes much to Cézanne. At the same time he brought an almost geometrical structure to his compositions and introduced bright, acid colours."
– texts based on curator's notes from the National Galleries of Scotland