1800s Robert Walker MACBETH ORIGINAL Etching THE RIVER FERRY Signed Framed COA$549.00
1800s Robert Walker MACBETH ORIGINAL Etching THE RIVER FERRY Signed Framed COA
$549.00
Artist: Robert Walker Macbeth (Scottish, 1848-1910)
Title: The Ferry
Medium: Original hand pulled copper plate etching on laid paper.
Year: 1881
Signature: Signed in the plate, lower left.
Condition: Excellent
Dimensions: Image Size 6 1/2 x 11 inches
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 15 x 20 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials.
This is a truly English piece of work. One can imagine the piled-up clouds, like solid light; the trees, the houses and portion of the bank massed with them, the group of gleaners on the raft to the right making part of the great mass of light that almost fills the picture. On the other hand, there are only thin and transparent shadows, lying on the bank to the left, on the water and across the lower half of the figures of the gypsies who, with their horse and dog, are crossing at the same time. It is thoroughly in the spirit of the old English school the introduction of the incident of the gypsy man tuning his fiddle. There is to be music all the way across. The two groups are very well contrasted – the harvesters weary and glad of the rest; the wanderers all alive and amusing themselves. Even the two dogs belong to two different states of society. For the moment, the nomads are of more consequence than ordinary working people. The others have their regards fixed on them. The ferryman at the windlass is attentive to the scraping of the fiddle.
Robert Walker Macbeth RA was a Scottish painter, etcher and watercolourist, specialising in pastoral landscape and the rustic genre. His father was a portrait painter named Norman Macbeth and his niece Ann Macbeth. Two of his five brothers, James Macbeth (1847–1891) and Henry Macbeth, later Macbeth-Raeburn RA (1860–1947), were also artists.Born in Glasgow, Macbeth studied art in London, producing realistic everyday scenes and working as an illustrator for the weekly newspaper The Graphic. He painted in the Lincolnshire and Somerset countryside, his landscape work influenced by that of George Heming Mason and Frederick Walker. His The Cast Shoe was bought by the Chantrey Bequest in 1890 and is now at Tate Britain.From 1871 Macbeth exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, and the Fine Art Society, all in Westminster. There were also exhibitions in the regions at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in Birmingham, the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Manchester Art Gallery.In the same year (1871) Macbeth was made an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) becoming a full member in 1901. He became a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (RE) in 1880, and an honorary member in 1909. In 1882 he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) and in 1883 was elected to be a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI). In 1883 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy (RA), becoming a full member in 1903.On 9 August 1887, he married Lydia Esther Bates, daughter of General John Bates of the Bombay native cavalry. Their daughter, Phillis Macbeth, was better known as the actress Lydia Bilbrook. Their second daughter, Norma Robina Macbeth married John Thomas Hall in 1924.He died at Holder’s Green, near Lindsell, Essex.1895 Macbeth painted a mural, Opening of the Royal Exchange by Her Majesty Queen Victoria, 28th October 1844, which can be seen in the Royal Exchange, London.
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A beautiful engraving done by my ancestor, artist JD Watson. Terrific price and super quick and safe shipping. A+++ seller.
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