An elusive Prussian impressionist.
Today, November 23rd, is World Watercolor Day, an event that aims to pay tribute to this wet artistic technique and to the countless artists who have practiced it, and to create a renovating impulse, an event to which many countries have been invited, including the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth countries. To contribute to this celebration I will dedicate this post to the work of an almost unknown impressionist artist who produced a good part of his artwork in this medium.
One year ago, 2nd December 2019 was probably the date when my small art collection was most expanded. Three antique watercolours and two etchings crossed my path in a Hammersmith charity, British Red Cross, in Shepherds Bush Rd. And I'm not just talking about the number of paintings, but also the artistic quality of the acquired artworks. The best one is, no doubt, an old watercolour measuring 340 mm. x 240 mm. It was signed by what appeared to be a mysterious German artist, F Söhns, and dated (18)75. I found some notes on the reverse side, including the title of the artwork, written by hand in pencil: ‘Torphin Farm at Juniper Green’. It's again a pastoral scene, from a rural spot in Scotland called Juniper Green. At first I was not able to identify the exact location of the image, but later I could find out that it was a hill called ‘Torphin’. More specifically, the watercolour depicts a view of Torphin farmland from the hill, an area shortly after occupied by a golf course (Torphin Hill Golf Club, 1895-2013).
The picture depicts some farmland with pastures and some roofs and cottages of a small village or farm, presumably Torphin Farm, among the trees. To the right, several cattle grazing. A cattle line comes up the pathway on the left. In the midground, the figure of a peasant woman walking towards the farm. To the right and in the background some distant hills, Torphin Hill and perhaps Holyrood Park and Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.
A view of Juniper Green from the golf course on Torphin Hill in a 1908 postcard.
When I acquired the watercolour, it was protected on the back by a sheet of a Glasgow newspaper with a headline about the debate in parliament and Winston Churchill's speech on the ‘Betting and Lotteries Act’ (1934). That would be the last time it was framed, 59 years after Söhns painted it.
We know some facts about this author, Frederick Ernest Söhns. In The New Edinburgh, Leith, and County Household Directory. 1868-69 (Ballantyne & Co. Edinburgh 1868), Frederick Söhns is listed as lithographic draughtsman, and living at 60 Frederick St., Edinburgh. Thus, we know that he was a professional artist of Prussian surname, active at least from 1867-8.
The New Edinburgh, Leith, and County Household Directory. 1868-69.
In the Scotland Census of 1871 we find an Ellen Söhns (31 years old), an artist's wife, registered in Leslie, Fife, not too far north of Edinburgh.
Scotland Census of 1871.
We also know that during the 1870s, Frederick Söhns was an active exhibitor at the Albert Institute of Fine Arts exhibitions at the Albert Gallery, Edinburgh. At the Winter Exhibition of 1877-78 Frederick Söhns had seven paintings on display: A bit on the Water of Leight, near Currie (East Room), Part of Riccarton Avenue (Centre Room), Part of Riccarton Grounds in Autumn (West Room), Among the Pentland Hills, near Bonally (West Room), On the Road to Bethlehem Wheite Mountains, U.S. of America (West Room), Murray Bay, St. Lawrence River, Canada (West Room), Kinleith Burn, near Currie (West Room). The selling price of Söhns' artworks was between £5 and £6, according to the exhibition catalogue, which, translated into today's prices, would be between £750 and £900. The same selling price as a painting exhibited by a young James Guthrie, from Glasgow, an artist who would later become leader of the Glasgow Boys. Five of these seven artworks exhibited by Söhns consisted of landscapes depicting places near Juniper Green. In that exhibition, Söhns's paintings were shown alongside the late J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, whose art was not for sale.
It seems that Söhns was born in Prussia, but settled in Scotland. His date of birth is unknown. He died at the beginning of the Edwardian period, probably in 1903. The postal office directory does not show a record of him after that date. Few of his artworks have come to light. His surviving pictures are landscapes painted in an impressionist style. A number of his artworks including this piece depict Juniper Green, a village in the parish of Colinton, about 5 miles south-west of Edinburgh, and with very little population. At the end of the Victorian period Juniper Green had a population of 1290. It is known that Söhns lived in that hamlet for some time, at least from 1877, although he may have visited the area earlier. The village had a station on the Balerno branch of the Caledonian railway with trains running to Edinburgh Princes Street via Juniper Green and Colinton.
In the list of exhibitors at the 1877 Winter Exhibition of the Albert Institute of Fine Arts, Edinburgh, which contains the artists' place of residence, Söhns is listed as living at Hillmount House, Juniper Green, Edingurgh. He later lived at Isa Cottage for a couple of years before moving to the then newly built house called Nahant further along and on the opposite side of Belmont Road (Post-Office Edinburgh & Leith Directory 1879-80 to 1903-04, General County Directory). The 1904-1905 directory no longer lists Sohns at Juniper Green, and from the following year onwards it lists someone named Herman Söhns living at Nahant, probably his son.
In the village Söhns was a well-known landscape artist. In the postal directories of the 1870s and 1880s he no longer described himself as a lithographic draughtsman, but as a painter, which suggests that he was by then a professional artist who made a living from his paintings. In the Stater's Royal National Commercial Directory of Scotland 1903, p. 547, Frederick Söhns Ernest appears as a private resident, living in Nahunt (House), but also as a painter in the commercial directory.
“Juniper Green 300” (see http://www.junipergreencc.org.uk- History of the area, Juniper Green 300), a website created during the tercentenary year of the village and with the purpose of research, record, archive and publish the history of Juniper Green from 1707 to 2007, mentions Frederick Söhns as a local landscape artist. He painted the earlier, original church at Juniper Green before it was reconstructed in 1879 (“Colinton and Gurrie Free Church”, watercolour by F. Söhns). I am grateful to Mr Russell Salton, of Juniper Green Village Hall, for attending to my enquiry and for the information provided.
Scottish Art in the Late Nineteenth Century:
To provide opportunities for artists to exhibit, the Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland was founded in Edinburgh in 1819. Seven years later it became the Scottish Academy of Art. In 1838 it was granted a Royal Charter and became known as the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA). Its members helped to found the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, which opened in 1859.
The Albert Institute of Fine Art, based in Edinburgh, dates back to 1876, and was set up by artists to advance the cause of art generally, and more specifically Contemporary Scottish Art, to promote artists' links, to increase facilities for the study and observation of art, to deliver lectures on Art, to bring more general attention to art, and to provide greater opportunities for exhibiting and selling paintings, sculpture and architecture, watercolour drawings and other works of art, similar aims to those of the Royal Scottish Academy, an institution with which they were not intended to compete, as stated in the Institute's aims, but to co-exist without antagonism or rivalry. Indeed, several artists from the RSA exhibited their work in the two annual exhibitions held by the Albert Institute of Fine Art at the Albert Gallery in Edinburgh, in winter and summer. In those exhibitions, artists were required to pay a commission of 20% of each sale. Failing to achieve its objectives, the institute ceased its artistic activity in 1885.
In 1861 the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts was formed to provide exhibiting opportunities for artists. It opened its own gallery in 1879, and in 1896 it also received a royal charter, becoming known as the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. The Glasgow Government School of Design had been established in 1845, changing its name to the Glasgow School of Art in 1853.
By the 1880s Glasgow had become the leading industrial city of the british Empire. Many successful industries developed. In 1888 and 1902 two huge International Exhibitions attracted visitors from all over the world. Art clubs and galleries were opened. At the turn of the century Glasgow expanded to over twice the size of Edinburgh. The newly prosperous middle classes commissioned architects to build them luxurious homes, which they adorned with art. Some began collecting artworks, and most supported local artists. Glasgow also became recognized internationally as a centre for avant-garde movements.
The Glasgow Boys were one of the groups of artists active in Scotland, principally in Glasgow, at the same time as Sohns. Through the 1880s and 1890s they introduced forms of Impressionism and Post-Impressionist painting to Scotland, developing their own individual interpretations of it. The most interesting thing about Sohns is that he worked in an impressionist style in the decade before the Glasgow Boys. In addition to painting in Glasgow and its environs, the Glasgow Boys sought to capture the many facets of the character of Scotland and painted in other parts of the country. Like Sohns, they often depicted scenes of rural and prosaic life, which were captured outdoors.
The production of naturalistic paintings was new to this time period, and thus their techniques were considered innovative. Similarly, the pieces often created a sense of movement, an accurate or naturalistic depiction of light and shade, and realistic texture, often highly coloured. The Glasgow Boys established a vigorous style of oil painting using large square brushes and thick paint with bold colours, influenced by Jules Bastien Lepage. Watercolour also played an important role in several of these artists. It is said that they revolutionised painting in Scotland. They looked to France for their inspiration, and many of them studied in Paris. One group met up in Grez-sur-Loing.
Frederick Söhns at auctions.
Söhns' localised artwork is limited. Despite this, it has been offered at auction on occasion:
-¿Auction House? Ontario, Canada. 27 June 2006, Lot 28. On the Coast, North Devon, by Frederick Söhns, 1883. Watercolour. Signed. 48.5 x 76 cm.
-Bonhams. Edinburgh, UK. 14 June 2007, Lot 163 (Sale nº 15118). A lowland stream, by Frederick Söhns. Watercolour. Signed. 48 cm x 33 cm. (Tel. +44 131 225 2266; edinburgh@bonhams.com).
The depiction of the old English farm.
A week later, on December 13, 2020, I found a modest watercolour drawing at the Portobello Road market, titled (in pencil) “¿Bodensfield? Farm. Shedfield Hants (Hampshire). Copy (…) sketch by Collins RA”, and numbered back '9264'. Its size, 256 x 180 mm (101 x 71 inches).
On the cardboard was the inscription “¿W M Simpson? after painting by W Collins RA”.
It appears from the inscription that the sketch is a copy by some W. Simpson after an original artwork by RA William Collins. As a matter of interest Shedfield is a village in Hampshire about 12 miles north of Southampton, and William Collins did actually visit the village in 1844. We can find other artworks by William Collins in the same location:
Untitled (Shedfield, Hampshire), 1845, watercolour by William Collins.
The first thing that catches our attention is that its dimensions are practically identical to those of our watercolour, which may suggest that the copy was made directly from the original, and not from a reproduction.
We found the following information about this watercolor by Collins in the British Museum collection:
-Curator’s comments (Staiton 1985): Collins was a life-long friend of Linnell, and his memoirs show that as a young man they shared many of the same ideas about the study of landscape. "I think him [Linnell] right in ... insisting upon the necessity of making studies - without much reference to form - of the way in which colours come against each other". This sketch of an old cottage is close in style to studies of the same kind made by Linnell c. 1811-15.
-Bibliography: Stainton, Lindsay, British Landscape Watercolours 1600-1860, BM, 1985
Comparing both watercolours, it is clear that Collins' technical mastership is absent in our farm, probably the work of some artist in training. We know that artist William Simpson (1823-1899) taught himself to draw watercolours by copying paintings by other artists. During his apprenticeship he drew cottages and other old buildings. Simpson tells about it in his biography. In carver and gilders' windows on Queen and Buchanan streets he could see drawings and watercolours on display. In his autobiography Simpson recalled that his early efforts were far from successful, but he persevered to become a successful watercolorist. The question is whether our watercolor is antique enough to be by William Simpson, R.I. It is difficult to know. Maybe that number on the back, '9264', has some meaning, but we haven't made much progress in this regard so far.
Simpson, William (edited by G. Eyre-Todd, 1903). The Autobiography of William Simpson, London, T. F. Unwin.
William Simpson was born in Glasgow in 1823. On leaving school he trained as a lithographer with the engraver David MacFarlane and two years later entered a seven year apprenticeship with the lithographic printers and engravers Allan & Ferguson. David Allan encouraged his artistic abilities and assigned him to sketch many of Glasgow's old buildings for Robert Stuart's Views and Notices of Glasgow in Former Times (1848). He attended Glasgow School of Design from 1845 and sold his first watercolour in 1850. In 1851 he moved to London and worked for Day & Son, the leading lithographers of the time. When the Crimean War began in 1854 he was sent to produce on-the-spot sketches for a large illustrated work commissioned by the publishers Colnaghi & Son. The Seat of War in the East was published in 1855-56, and remains a masterpiece of lithography. For the next 30 years he reported from all over Europe, Asia and America, sketching the great events and personages of the world. Simpson retired in 1885.
In 1912 The Mitchell Library purchased from the Moir Fund over 100 Simpson items including manuscripts, several artworks, catalogues of his exhibitions, scrapbooks and drawings, and an additional 500 drawings were received with the Bain Memorial Collection donation in 1920.
I still found two more depictions of the old English farm, both at the Portobello Road market. The first of them could be titled "River landscape with farmhouse in the distance", or "A river stretch", although its location is unknown, as is its author. I found it on November 22nd, 2019, and it is a watercolour on paper.
The other original watercolour on paper I found does have a title, "Cop Riding Farm, Lepton, Huddersfield (Yorkshire)", and is signed in pencil by an artist named George Taywt, and dated in 1972. Its size is 39 x 29 cm. I purchased it on January 31, 2020. Lepton is a suburb of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England. Cop Riding Farm, in Thurgory Lane, is still a working farm.
I also found some drawings related to rural life and farm work. The one I show below depicts a farmer ploughing a field using two draught horses. In the background we can see the English countryside, with some Tudor-style cottages.
And a few months later I found another fine piece, a wonderful old English farmhouse, an original artwork by a well known watercolorist, and one of the most appreciated paintings in my art collection, but that piece will deserve its own article in this blog.
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