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1813—1833
Marriage with Mrs. Dairymple of
Fordel—The Manse Visitors—Provincial Antiquities of Scotland—Turner
and Scott—Rossetti—William Bell Scott— Ruskin—Anecdotes—Visits to
London—Voyage with Dr. Chalmers— Characteristics—The Duke of Buccleuch’s
Order—Public Exhibitions in Edinburgh—Thomson’s Influence—The Scottish
School—Horatio Macculloch—Robert Scott Lauder—Marriage of Isabella
Thomson.
MR. THOMSON, after several
years of widowhood, took to himself a second wife in the person of Frances
Ingram Spence, the widow of Mr. Martin Dalrymple, of Fordel and Oleland.
The marriage took place on 6th December 1813, and the circumstances under
which it was brought about were of a somewhat romantic character. They are
briefly as follows :— Mrs. Dalrymple, happening to call at the shop of a
picture-
dealer during a visit to
Edinburgh, was much struck by a painting of the Falls of Foyers. The
execution was so novel and effective that, as she afterwards said, ‘she
was quite inspired by its feeling and picturesque beauty.’ Herself an
artist of no mean pretensions, she inquired the artist’s name, and was
surprised to find it was Thomson of
Duddingston. She had before seen specimens of his work, but never anything
that so thoroughly realised her ideal in
landscape. From that moment Mrs. Dalrymple longed to
become acquainted with the man who could conceive and paint so fine a
picture. She had soon an opportunity of gratifying her wish, being shortly
afterwards introduced by one of her relatives to the minister. Before
being aware of Mrs. Dalrymple’s sentiments towards him, it is said that
Mr. Thomson, the moment he saw her, and entered into conversation, felt
‘that woman must be my wife; she is the only being that I have seen
for years with whom I could deeply sympathise.’ Only one result could
follow.
They were shortly afterwards
married, and their affection for each other throughout life has been
described as ‘more like the warm, buoyant, innocent love of childhood than
the staid, sober, stereotyped friendship of their advancing years.’
Mrs. Thomson’s intense love for
music and painting harmonised so well with all her husband’s tastes and
habits, that they spent much of their time in each other’s society. Once
she was asked by a friend how it came about that she, who was so rich,
could ever have thought of marrying a minister. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it is
very easy to explain that; we just drew together!’
Mr. Thomson was himself a performer
on the flute and violin of considerable excellence. Those who had heard
his performances on either of these instruments seemed not readily to
forget them. On one occasion, when he and Scott were being entertained by
Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, at Blair-Adam, with a select company of
friends, Scott records that ‘we bad wine and wassail and John Thomson’s
delightful flute to help us through the evening.’
Though not by any means a leader in
conversation, but rather inclined as of old to act the part of the good
listener, the minister succeeded, with the able assistance of his wife, in
throwing an attractive charm round their fireside circle, which added many
friends, and made the manse at Duddingston an envied resort. ‘Every one,’
we are told in a little memoir by his niece, Miss Isabella R. Thomson—’
Every one was delighted with the genuine simplicity of his manners, as
well as with the depth and accuracy of his views on all subjects, for he
was not only an arduous student during early youth, but his manhood
steadily kept pace with the science and thought of the day.’ In evidence
of this statement it is worthy of note that Thomson was a writer as well
as a painter, and as a contributor to some of the early numbers of the
Edinburgh Review of several articles on physical science, particularly
on optics, which were much admired for their manly vigour and clearness of
thought, he exemplified what is seldom found combined in one and the same
person—a love for science and art.
As an amateur violinist Thomson had
few equals. His violin performances, it is said, were remarkable for their
vigour of feeling and expression. ‘We can never,’ says one, ‘forget the
impression made upon us by a favourite air played by him on the violin,
called the Dead March of the Mackenzies, accompanied by his son Frank on
the violin-cello.’ He played strathspeys, laments, Irish jigs, and
Highland marches splendidly; indeed, had he not been a distinguished
painter, he would have been equally well known to the world as a most
skilful and soul-inspiring musician.
Music found a congenial home in the
manse, and drew within its walls many a delightful company, at a time when
public concerts were neither so plentiful nor so cheap as they now are.
Mrs. Thomson was indeed quite an enthusiast, and did much to stimulate a
taste for music in the parish. She had a large class for the cultivation
of sacred music, which met in the manse not unfrequently twice a week, and
was conducted by herself, and at which John Wilson, the celebrated singer
of Scottish songs, used to assist. He was a young man at the time, and
frequently officiated for the precentor in the church, but so impressed
was Mr. Thomson with his talents, that he predicted he would rise to
excellence—a prediction afterwards fully verified.
Shortly after the marriage the manse
was considerably enlarged, by an addition to the east side, including a
large drawing-room and bedrooms above, in order to meet its growing social
requirements.
With music and painting in company,
the guests and visitors at the manse were numerous and brilliant, The
house, indeed, was frequented to an extent that would hardly be credited.
Thomson’s reputation as an artist
was now thoroughly established, and while many works from his easel were
still freely gifted to friends, orders for pictures poured in upon him
from all quarters, and we have been told on good authority that between
1820 and 1830 he was in receipt of fully £1800 a year from this source—and
that was considered a very wonderful thing in those days.
It was in the August of 1817 that
Sir David Wilkie, then at the height of his popularity, paid a visit to
Scotland. Being desirous of making a tour of the country, in order to
become better acquainted with its scenery, only then beginning to be
appreciated, he came down to Edinburgh. He had evidently no previous
personal acquaintance with Mr. Thomson, but acting on the advice of
several Edinburgh friends, and among others Mr. John Clerk of Eldin, he
paid a visit to Duddingston manse with the view of asking the minister to
accompany him to the Highlands. In a letter to his sister, narrating the
circumstance, Sir David mentions that, ‘on going to Duddingston, however,
Mr. Thomson was away from home, and his wife (who is a very fine woman)
told me she doubted whether he could go, as his Sacrament is just coming
on; otherwise I believe that not only would he have gone, but that Mrs.
Thomson, who is also a great enthusiast, would have accompanied us one or
two of the stages. I accordingly left Edinburgh on Tuesday last without a
companion, but with plenty of letters of introduction.’
A tour in the West Highlands in
those days was not the easy-going business we now find it; some parts of
the country, indeed, were practically inaccessible, and in the company of
such a companion as Thomson, who knew the ground well, Sir David’s ‘aunt,
which was made at the instigation of Sir Walter Scott, would have had its
pleasure immensely enhanced. The prominent features of our Scottish
scenery were then little known; but what Sir Walter Scott did for Scotland
in word-painting Thomson did with his brush. His passion for his art grew
with years, and ‘he searched the country (says Alexander Smith) for
subjects for his easel with greater ardour, one almost fears, than he
showed in searching the Scriptures for texts for his sermons!’
It was in 1818 that Thomson and
Turner came first into contact. In that year a proposal was made to
publish a large work to be called The Provincial Antiquities of
Scotland, illustrating the chief picturesque features of the
country—its castles, its churches, abbeys, woods, and hills. Leading
artists of the day were to be employed to furnish the plates, and Sir
Walter Scott undertook to write the descriptive letterpress. To John
Thomson and J. M. W. Turner the publishers naturally looked as the two
recognised exponents of landscape art. Both were engaged, and the latter
came down to Scotland and made a tour of the country, sketch-book in hand,
in 1822. He made a number of drawings of places of interest, chiefly in
the Lothians, as Borthwick and Crichton Castles, Tantallon, Dunbar,
Craigmiliar, Linlithgow Palace, the Bass Rock, etc., and visited these in
company with Scott and Thomson. Turner never seemed, however, to get into
Scott’s favour. The great novelist had a keen enjoyment of the things in
Nature, which were the raw material, so to speak, of Turner’s art. He
delighted in landscape, and no artist ever had a stronger liking for
ancient or romantic buildings, especially when their interest was enhanced
by historical or legendary associations. Yet, notwithstanding what was up
to this point a community of tastes, we are told by Turner’s biographer,
‘Sir Walter could not really enter into the mind of Turner, because,
whilst delighting in Nature, he had no understanding of graphic art.’ We
are inclined to believe that it was more a personal antipathy to Turner’s
habits and manner that made Scott indicate a strong preference for
Thomson, even as a painter. He only acquiesced in Turner supplying so many
of the illustrations for the work, as he himself said, ‘because he was all
the fashion.’ As it ultimately happened, when the book made its appearance
in 1826, an equal number of the illustrations were executed by Turner and
Thomson, and it is safe to say that for power of delineation, accuracy of
drawing and finish, Thomson’s are not surpassed by any within its pages.
Scott declined any pecuniary
recompense for this publication, but afterwards, when its success was
secured, he accepted from the proprietors some of the beautiful drawings
by Turner, Thomson, and others.
During Turner’s sojourn in Scotland,
he was a frequent guest at the manse of Duddingston, and William Bell
Scott, then only ‘a beginner of twenty or so,’ tells us in his
Autobiographical Notes, in his own simple way, some reminiscences not
altogether complimentary to Turner, and of his meeting him at dinner
there. ‘Thomson,’ he says, ‘had unbounded admiration of Turner’s art; at
the same time he laughed good-humouredly at the man, and at the anecdotes
then current, to which he added others from his own intercourse.’
Cockneyism was at the time the prevailing subject of Edinburgh ridicule,
not in literature merely, but in social life, and as an indication of the
dwarfed cultivation and style of talk of the great adept, he tells how
Thomson was one day examining with much admiration a drawing by Turner. It
was a view of a distant river, with a greyhound at full speed after a hare
in the foreground. ‘Ah,’ said Turner, noticing Thomson’s close scrutiny of
the picture, ‘I see you want to know why I have introduced that ‘are. It
‘s a bit of sentiment, sir! For that is the spot where ‘Arold ‘Arefoot
fell, and you see I have made an ‘ound a-chasing an ‘are!’ Was ever a joke
more contemptible? It is quite as excruciating as any surgical operation
Sydney Smith could have conceived or performed on the obtuse skull of the
dullest Scotsman!
Some years afterward this story
happened to be repeated in a company of friends among whom were D. G.
Rossetti, John Ruskin, and William Bell Scott. Scott and Ruskin did not
agree on many points, particularly in their estimate of Turner, and Scott
told the story with all the gusto he could command as a good humoured
reprisal for what he called ‘Ruskin’s supercilious pretence’ and inflated
notions of Turner’s abilities, following it up with the remark that ‘the
evidence of the personality and talk of a man was in most cases conclusive
as to the character of his works.’ Rossetti laughed, and asked if Turner
really talked. in that way, and how he managed to get over that sort of
thing; but Ruskin’s countenance fell, and the thundercloud on his brow
indexed the passion within, or as Scott himself archly said—’ the
poisonous expression on his face was a study!’
Ruskin has undoubtedly written much
true criticism of his hero; very beautiful, and very instructive. Let us
not undervalue so
priceless a gift to the literature
of Art. His hero-worship was no affectation, but a loving, spontaneous
admiration, which has impelled him in talk as in his writings to frequent
extravagance, or as W. Bell Scott put it, ‘to find out qualities no one
else could see, and to contradict or ignore those evident to every one
else.’
At the particular meeting referred
to in Duddingston manse there was a large party at dinner. Turner, who was
residing in the city, was brought out in the carriage of a friend, who,
however, left soon after dinner, and so the great artist was thrown on the
indulgence of another friend to frank him home. Poor Turner, he never
could do justice to himself!
Though in many respects Thomson and
Turner had tastes in common, their moral natures were most dissimilar.
Both were idealists in Art; both were absorbed in the study of the
beautiful; both felt the power of colour and form impelling them to work
and think. But while the one was selfish, ill-natured, and jealous to the
last degree, the other was open, candid, generous, and unsuspicious.
On the subject of Art Turner’s
experience was doubtless the more extensive of the two. He had greater
opportunities for foreign travel; he had seen more of the world, and
intercourse with foreign artists had widened the scope of his art
knowledge. As such he was an undoubted authority in his own province, and
Thomson yielded him that deference which was unquestionably his due.
On one occasion Turner spent several
days with the minister at the manse, and some amusing reminiscences of the
visit remain. It was a universal belief in those days that the old masters
had their secrets, so called; and in one of the biographies of Turner, we
find him asking Thomson if he had yet found Titian’s secret. It appeared
as if Turner himself had what he considered valuable secrets, which he
jealously guarded, allowing no one to see him paint or even to sketch if
he could prevent it. He was always living in an atmosphere of mystery. One
day Thomson and ‘Grecian’ Williams set out with him on an excursion to
Craigmillar Castle, in the immediate vicinity. They went to make sketches
of the ruin; but the London artist, when in the neighbourhood of his
subject, avoided their company, edging away by himself and leaving the two
to work together. He made several sketches of the Castle from different
points of view, in pencil, but showed what he had done to no one. On their
return to the manse in the evening, Turner happening to lay down his
sketch-book on the lobby table, the minister’s wife, curious to see the
great artist’s work, ran off with the book. Turner, however, gave chase,
and took it from her before she had time to look at it, nor did any one
see anything he did whilst he remained at the manse.
On the other hand, Thomson, in the
matter of Art, was free from the narrow jealousy of spirit frequently to
be found among professional artists. The fact that in his modesty he
always looked upon himself as an amateur no doubt contributed largely to
this feeling. Of Turner he used to speak in the most enthusiastic
terms—long before Ruskin, his great expositor, was born—as the greatest
landscape painter that the world had yet produced. We much fear the same
generosity was not evinced on the other side. Whether Turner looked upon
Thomson as merely
an amateur we cannot say. ‘For amateurs as a class, it
is said, he cherished feelings of unconquerable aversion’; but we are
inclined to suspect that for Thomson, at least, he secretly cherished that
respect which jealous natures are not frank enough to admit.
Tantellon Castle
During his visit the minister
endeavoured in vain to find out what his friend thought of his pictures.
One day when he had taken him into the studio to show him several of
these, newly framed and ready to be sent off for exhibition, Turner, after
looking at them somewhat critically for some time, at last called out
rather ungraciously, ‘Ah, Thomson! you beat me hollow—in frames!’
Even to a direct question as to what he thought of that picture,
pointing to a particularly fine one on the easel, he made no response. It
was only when leaving the room, as his eye fell on a small sketch hanging
on the wall, that he stopped and exclaimed, ‘The man who did that
could paint!’
The only other complimentary remark Turner seems to
have made was in reference to the Loch, which he did in this wise, as he
drove off from the manse door: ‘By God, though, I envy you that piece of
water!Well he might: it was Thomson’s living model. Very little indeed did
Thomson or any one else get out of this strange mortal.
Whatever Turner was in Art, he was essentially coarse
and vulgar in speech. It was his way to make a joke—often a rough one—out
of a left-handed compliment, as on one occasion at Duddingston, when Sir
Francis Grant and Mr. Horsman, M.P., were present. Grant, who then resided
in Regent’s Park, near to the Zoological Gardens, asked the great painter
courteously to come and dine with him on his return to London. ‘I'll be
very glad,’ said Turner jocosely, ‘I often go to see the wild beasts fed!’
 A
propos of this is an amusing
reminiscence by W. L. Leitch, a clever artist of the old school, well
acquainted with both men. Turner, said Leitch, was very fond of painting
the Nor’ Loch at the Jase of the Castle Rock of Edinburgh, and when there
used to like to run and get his dinner with Mr. Thomson at Duddingston,
and spoke of it as ‘making the little distance’ between the manse and the
loch. Re did this very frequently, and always with great pleasure. One day
Mr. Thomson said to him, ‘Turner, I mean to have a dinner with you in
Queen Anne Street when I come up to London. I shall be there next month.’
Turner at once responded, ‘But it is very uncertain whether I shall be
there.’ Thomson said, ‘Oh, but you must be there; I'll wait till you are.’
With a shrug of his shoulder Turner suggested, ‘You had much better get
your dinner at your own hotel.’ Mr. Thomson, however, determined to have
it out with him, but with what Mr. Leitch calls ‘the questionable taste
not uncommon at that period,’ said, ‘But I want to make the little
distance between my hotel and your house.’ ‘You will get your dinner more
comfortably at any place than at my house,’ pleaded Turner; ‘dine at your
own hotel.’ But the other answered stolidly, ‘I want to dine with you,
Turner.’ ‘Well, come to my house, then, if you like,’ said he at last,
‘but dine before you come!’ When Thomson arrived in London he went to
Queen Anne Street and made Turner fix a day for this too-much-talked-of
dinner. Before the day arrived, however, Thomson met Rogers, who, told him
that Sir Walter Scott was in town, and that he and Sir Walter and some
friends were going to dine at Richmond, and invited him to join the party.
‘But I can’t!’ replied Thomson, ‘I am going to dine with Turner.’ ‘With
Turner!’ cried Rogers, ‘you will get a very bad dinner there!’ Then they
pressed him to go to Richmond with them, and invited Turner to go too.
When Thomson conveyed the message, Turner said, ‘But I have bought the leg
of mutton!’ ‘Never mind the leg of mutton,’ replied Thomson; ‘take it with
you and stick it into the hand of the first poor person you meet.’
‘Not such a born fool!’ exclaimed Turner.
Thomson was quite a different character. He had little
self-esteem, or only sufficient to be called self-respect; but he was the
last man to attempt to hurt the feelings of others. He would frankly talk
of the excellences and faults of his own works with the honest freedom
that he evinced in criticising the works of his contemporaries or of the
old masters. When others could see no faults in his pictures he would
honestly point them out, and regret their existence. The love of truth
coloured every phase of his character.
That he was quite a match for Turner in repartee is
well illustrated by the story of their meeting in the London Gallery,
probably in the year 1827. Thomson was standing in the Gallery surrounded
by a number of friends, when Turner espied him, and with his usual
roughness of manner and vulgar familiarity advanced to shake hands,
exclaiming at the same time, in a kind of Anglicised Scotch, ‘Weel,
Thomson, hoo ‘s the guidwife and weans?’ Thomson, not at all put out,
replied in the native Doric, ‘Brawly, man, and hoo are ye yersel, frien’?’
Amid the shout of laughter which followed this sally at his solitary
condition, poor Turner was quite upset, and slunk off to another part of
the room.
The difference in character of the two men was very
marked in their human sympathies. Turner seems to have had little or no
regard for the welfare or feelings of others, while of the other it was a
remarkably true saying of his wife, that ‘it was not safe to trust John
with money in his pocket’; he would give it away so readily. One day, when
out walking together, they were met by a poor man, who humbly asked them
for a copper. Turner frowned, and roughly ordered the man about his
business, but Thomson’s feelings were roused by this unnecessary
harshness, and making the excuse that he had a word to say to the beggar,
he turned back, and, with a few kindly words, slipped a half-crown into
his hand.
 The
roughness of manner shown by Turner on his first visit to Scotland seems
to have made a bad impression on many besides Thomson. We find Sir Walter
Scott referring to it many years after—in 1831— when Cadell’s edition of
the Waverley Novels was being projected with illustrations by Turner. To
tell the truth, Scott would have infinitely preferred had his publishers
selected Thomson’s pencil rather than Turner’s for this particular
edition; but, yielding to their urgent representations, he at length
acquiesced in the selection of Turner, because, as they said, he was
better known in London than Thomson. He accordingly mentions in his
Journal after the arrangement was concluded: ‘I have written to the
Man of Art inviting him to come to Abbotsford to take the necessary
drawings, and offering to transport him to the places where he is to
exercise his pencil, though,’ says he in addition, ‘if I remember, he
is not very agreeable.’
That there was some similarity in their art-work has
been very generally admitted by critics, and indeed some have gone so far
as to discover a great deal of resemblance in their style, and have
described Thomson as the ‘Scottish Turner.’ We are not inclined to
homologate this entirely, for in many respects Thomson’s individuality was
such as to preclude him ever being an imitator of any one, however
excellent; but we have a rather remarkable illustration of the estimation
in which his work may be placed when standing upon its own merits. Sir
James D. Linton, President of the Royal Institution, London, in a speech
delivered in Aberdeen (2nd July 1890), referring to what Scotland had
achieved in the past in the world of Art, put Thomson of Duddingston in
the front rank of British artists; and speaking of the estimation in which
his work is still held, he mentioned that one of his pictures, which was
sold in Edinburgh a few years ago, reached London, but the picture was so
remarkably fine, that most of the experts there said, ‘It is not a
Thomson; it is a Turner’; and at Messrs. Christie and Manson’s rooms it
was actually sold as the work of the English artist! ‘Can there be,’ said
Sir James, ‘a higher compliment to a painter than that his work should be
taken for the work of a man I call the Shakespeare of Art?’
Though Thomson was not insensible to the advantages
which wealth and rank could purchase, in the pursuit of Art we find him
invariably rising above the sordid desire for recompense for his work.
This motive, which not unfrequently is found strongly developed in
painters of high attainment, had little or no weight with him. Being
practically independent of any income he might derive from his brush, he
was happily rid of the temptation to eke out his art by what are vulgarly
called ‘pot-boilers.’ He sought after Nature for the sake of Art, and the
pleasure and satisfaction its pursuit afforded him. It is doubtless true
that money sweetens labour, and the pleasure of painting was not lessened
but rather enhanced, by the feeling that his friends desired not merely to
be possessed of his work, but to pay a good price for what they got. Still
the motive for work and the reward for work done are different
considerations in the mind of the true artist. Thomson was something more
than a mere painter of pictures to adorn the parlours of those who could
afford to buy them. He was a student of Nature first, the artist next, and
last and least of all the merchant; indeed, the latter function he
performed, we fear, very indifferently. We have a good illustration of
this feature of his character in the following letter addressed to North
Dairymple, Esq., afterwards ninth Earl of Stair, and father of the present
Earl, who was then residing at Campie, near Musselburgh.
DUDDINGSTON, Sunday, 26 September 1830.
MY DEAR MR. DALRYMPLE,
If I read your note aright it is Friday 6th you mean
for us to have the pleasure of waiting on you. I believe the 6th
falls on Wednesday, and, of course, the following Friday is the 8th. We
are quite at your disposal either of these days, but till we hear again
shall be puzzled which of them you wish us to come—Deo Volente.
The picture sent to you lately is not, strictly
speaking, a view. I seldom do
paint views; but it was composed from materials immediately in the
neighbourhood of Loch Leven, with a distant peep of an old tower called
Burleigh. Since you do insist on my naming the filthy thing called a
price, I have generally had something about ten guineas for such
productions. Have you taken it out of the frame? The sacrifice of what is
hid up is of no great consequence; but, should you desire an enlargement
by several inches, you have it in your power. I remain, my dear Mr.
Dairymple,
yours with great regard,
J. THOMSON.
 No
considerations of ‘price’ were allowed to influence his enthusiasm—or
rather, shall we say, his creative inspiration ?—as an artist. ‘The true
landscapist,’ it has been well said, ‘is not only a seer; he is a maker, a
builder, a poet; but, he makes and builds up only in conformity with the
laws of the material universe, into which he sees a few handbreadths
deeper than his fellow-mortals, and hence his works become almost as
suggestive and spirit-stirring as Nature herself.’ If the reproduction of
Nature, even if it be only in so ephemeral a material as a piece of rough
canvas or paper, is of man’s work the nearest in resemblance to the work
of creation, Thomson undoubtedly experienced, in the delight such
creations gave him, his highest recompence, and we are almost tempted, but
with reverence, to add of his work, ‘and behold it was very good.’ The
‘price’ with him was a ‘filthy thing,’ or at least of only secondary
importance, and not to be put in comparison with the higher motive, which
teaches that
‘Art gifts with soul all matter that it touches.’
Sir Walter Scott, who sometimes looked at Art from a
more matter-of-fact point of view, in which the pecuniary recompence was,
in his estimation, a not unimportant element, soundly rated Thomson on one
occasion upon this indifference of his to money matters. It occurs in an
entry in his Journal, under date 22nd May 1831, as follows: ‘I have
a letter from my friend John Thomson of Duddingston. I had transmitted to
him an order from the Duke of Buccleuch for his best picture at his best
price, leaving the choice of the subject and everything else to himself.
He (Thomson) expresses the wish to do at an ordinary price a
picture of a common size. The declining to put himself forward
will, I fear, be thought like shrinking from his own reputation, which
nobody has less need to do. The Duke may wish a large picture for a
large price for furnishing a large apartment, and the artist should not
shrink from
it. I have written him my opinion. The feeling is no
doubt an amiable though a false one. He is modest in proportion to his
talents. But what brother of the finer arts ever approached excellence so
as to please himself?’
Thomson in this case complied with Scott’s wishes, and
painted for the Duke the picture of Ravensheugh Castle, which now adorns
the dining-room at Bowhill, his Grace’s Selkirkshire seat. It is a large
canvas, five feet three inches by three feet and a half, very similar in
composition as well as in tone and feeling to the same subject in the
Scottish National Gallery.
Scott’s opinion of his friend as an artist was very
pronounced, and there can be little doubt that his influence with the Duke
brought him more than this one commission. Five or six years later he
painted the large picture—seven feet by three feet and a half— of
‘Edinburgh from Inverleith House,’ for his Grace, which is also in the
same spacious apartment, for, said Scott, ‘he is not only the best
landscape painter of his age and country, but one of the warmest-hearted
men living, with a keen and unaffected feeling of poetry’ in his
composition.
When these words were penned Thomson had achieved some
of his greatest successes as a painter, and his fame stood deservedly high
in the Art world. An evidence of his remarkable industry is to be found in
the large number of his public exhibits alone, and these were certainly a
poor index of what must have passed from his hands altogether. During the
seven years previous to 1831 he exhibited at the Institution for the
Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Edinburgh no less than fifty pictures,
many of them large and important works.
In 1826 the Annual Exhibition, which before that date
had been held in the house of Sir Henry Raeburn in York Place, was held
for the first time in the rooms of the Royal Institution on the Mound, and
proved to be a decided advance upon previous efforts. Here is how his
friend Sir Walter speaks of it in his Journal
‘Feby. 9th.—I visited the Exhibition on my way home
from Court. The new rooms are most splendid, and there are several good
pictures. The Institution has subsisted but five years, and it is
astonishing how much superior the worst of the present collection are to
the tea-board-looking things which first appeared. John Thomson of
Duddingston has far the finest picture in the Exhibition of a large
size; subject, Dunluce—a ruinous castle of the Antrim family near the
Giant’s Causeway, with one of those terrible seas and skies which only
Thomson can paint.’
Again, in 1828, Scott, referring in his Journal to the Academy, says :—
‘9 Feby.—As I came home from the Court I stepped into
the Exhibition. It makes a very good show. I particularly distinguished
John Thomson’s picture of Turnberry Castle, which is of first-rate
excellence.’
Thomson’s influence, both personal and artistic, was
undoubtedly of great service at this time in the formation of the Scottish
School of Art. By the young men of the Academy his counsel and advice were
eagerly sought after, and were as freely given. No one sought help from
him in vain, for his house and hand were ever open to all who really
wanted his assistance. To the younger men especially he was ever generous
and helpful. His position and influence gave him many opportunities of
encouraging struggling merit, and that in a truly friendly and
unostentatious way.
Among those who may be named as coming under Thomson’s
personal influence, and who received great kindness at his hands, may be
mentioned Daniel Macnee, afterwards ‘Sir Daniel,’ and President of the
Academy, William Bell Scott, Horatio Macculloch, the brothers James
Eckford Lauder and Robert Scott Lauder, David Scott, and many others, who
in after years acknowledged their obligations.
William Bell Scott tells us in his autobiography that
about the year 1826 he was striving to overcome the difficulties of
etching and engraving, and being desirous of showing Thomson that he had
to some extent at least mastered these arts, and was able to undertake the
reproduction in black and white of a large landscape, he borrowed from him
a picture called the ‘Martyrs’ Tombs,’ being graves of Covenanters in the
wild mountain region of Galloway. This picture by Thomson (whom he
designates ‘the clerical amateur who had at once gone ahead of all the
Scottish professors’) had made a profound sensation. It was a fine
picture, and Scott felt proud to be allowed to engrave it. ‘When my
engraving of it was finished,’ says Bell Scott, ‘I took the proof to
Professor Wilson, and asked if I might place a dedication to him under
it.’ The request was readily granted; but it must be admitted, for the
credit of the original, that Scott’s reproduction of it in black and white
cannot be said to be a success.
Horatio Macculloch, whose early training and practice
was in the West, and whose vigour of style, truthfulness of colouring, and
carefulness in detail mark him out as a leader in Scottish landscape, is
frequently compared with Thomson. But while Macculloch admired the works
of Thomson, and felt spurred on to emulation by his example, his ideas of
Art were totally different. He had, in fact, formed his style, and his
pictures had been much admired, before he met Thomson. Thomson showed him
marked attention on his coming to Edinburgh, was much charmed with his
work, and frequently invited him to meet at his hospitable board those men
of talent or position by whom he was generally surrounded; but it is said
that no assistance in his art progress was given or expected.
Perhaps over none of the young men of the first quarter
of the century was Thomson’s influence more appreciably felt than over the
character of Robert Scott Lauder, R.S.A., and his brother Eckford.
Thomson doubtless sympathised much with young Scott
Lauder in his early aspirations for Art, with parental and other
difficulties to be surmounted. Had he not himself when a youth had
parental influence biassing his mind against his early predilections, and
forcing him into the ministry? But while he had accepted the latter as his
profession, he had still retained his love for Art, and had kept up the
practice of it with wonderful perseverance. It was clear to every one that
Art to him was more than the ministry. Yet the two were, in a measure, not
incompatible, for Art and Literature are twin sisters. But poor Lauder’s
lot was different. After receiving a good commercial education at the High
School of Edinburgh, he was placed in the counting-house of his father’s
tannery at Silvermills, without the power of choice, his views on the
matter of a profession being simply ignored, and the parental will made to
dominate any predilection for ‘such nonsense as painting.’ The result was
as might have been expected. Young Lauder neglected the figures of
arithmetic in the tannery for those of Michael Angelo and the great
masters. This annoyed and disgusted his disappointed parent, who
endeavoured first by gentle remonstrance, and afterwards by overbearing
opposition, to thwart and subdue his son’s art inclinations. Father and
son were equally stubborn, and if the former at length gave way, it was in
silent contempt or sorrowful protest. It is no doubt hard for a parent to
have his prudential and honourable designs set at naught and rendered
futile by the wilfulness and caprice of inexperienced youth, but it is
also hard to have one’s career mechanically fixed irrespective of
suitability or inclination. In the end, then, and in spite of the axiom
that ‘there is nothing like leather,’ young Lauder turned his back upon
tan-pits and leather, ledgers and cash, and in so doing most probably lost
his chance of eventually dying a wealthy man with a well-lined purse; but
his forsaking of the tan-pits of Silver-mills was a fortunate thing for
Scottish Art.
He early made the acquaintance of the minister of
Duddingston, who ever evinced for him the warmest friendship, and
exercised over his art not a little influence, particularly in the
formation of his style in regard to chiaroscuro and form. But Lauder not
only found the minister sympathetic, and his instruction profitable; he
had other attractions to draw him to the manse, in the person of the
minister’s daughter, for whom he had formed an ardent attachment, and she
for him; and where love reigns, Art may not presume to rule.
 The
visits, we may thus be sure, would be both frequent and long. On one
occasion Lauder brought with him a difficult canvas over which he had been
working for some time, but with not altogether satisfactory results, in
order to get some suggestions from Mr. Thomson about it. That he had
another object in view in his visit was evident from the scrupulous care
with which he was attired; for, as a relative once told us, ‘he was a
great dandy in his youth.’ Thomson examined the canvas carefully, and then
handed it back with a laughing twinkle in his eye, saying, ‘I am afraid,
Robert, Nature does not reveal her secrets to dandies in such fine
clothes!’
Robert Scott Lauder and Miss Isabella Thomson were
married at the manse on 10th September 1833, and in her company he
proceeded to Italy, where he studied for four or five years, after which
he settled down in London, gaining well-merited distinction as the painter
of the ‘Trial of Effie Deans’ and ‘Christ Teaching Humility,’—works which
will ever rank him among our most eminent Scottish artists.
Thomson’s kindness to him, it is said, he never forgot
to his latest day, but gratefully acknowledged among the happiest and most
fondly cherished experiences of a brilliant and honourable career. |
