"Even I never dreamed of magic like this". CS Lewis.
If someone were to create a museum of talented, less-known British artists, Ross Macdonald Ross would surely be among those chosen. Looking at his pictures one is convinced to find oneself in front of a skilled artist. I was so lucky to find an original painting by him at one of the Golborne's stalls. It was Friday, December 13th, at noon, and the stallholders had begun to pack up their goods because of the drizzle. At first I didn't notice the painting because it had been knocked over the asphalt. The frame was in poor condition and greasy, but the watercolour remained intact.
I didn't recognise the artist from his signature, but I could easily see a masterfully painted landscape. This watercolour was medium sized, 330 x 225 mm (paper 403 x 280 mm). It was signed lower left as "R. Macdonald Ross". An original label attached to the back provided information on its provenance: ‘John Magee Fine Art Dealer, 4 Donegall Square West, Belfast, Reference Nº: 271-20’. There is no record of the date, but Ross Macdonald Ross lived from 1891 to 1978. This artwork most likely predates 1944. Ross was passionate about the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland's southernmost region, County Down, and that is what he actually depicted in this painting.
Researching I discovered that Ross MacDonald Ross was a well-known landscape and seascape watercolour painter. He was born the 28th August 1891 into a family of farmers at Lower Arboll, in the parish of Tarbat, at the eastern end of Ross and Cromarty counties in northern Scotland, not far from Inverness. Ross' father, Andrew Ross, had married in 1870 to Chirsty MacDonald. Ross was the twelfth of thirteen children (an older brother predeceased). Even today the Ross family still lives on the farm they have occupied at least since the late 1820s.
The Ross family in 1902, photo courtesy of Ross' grandson, Donald.
Ross is probably the serious wee boy sitting front center.
As a child, Ross spent summers with his cousins at Reiff, a small remote coastal crofting and fishing village in western Ross-shire, Scottish Highlands. Although Ross would later become a well-known landscape painter in Ireland, some of his earliest surviving paintings were of Coigach, where his mother came from.
As a student Ross was trained at the Tain Royal Academy, a secondary school established in 1813. Young Ross had to cycle there every day from Arboll. At the turn of the century Glasgow had become the leading industrial city of the British Empire. It became recognized internationally as a centre for avant-garde movements. Art clubs and galleries were opened, and 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. The Glasgow Government School of Design had been established in 1845, changing its name to the Glasgow School of Art in 1853. Ross showed an early interest in art, and attended the Glasgow School of Art for five years, during the academic years between 1910-11 and 1914-15, studying figure, clay modelling and sculpture before moving into Drawing and Painting. There he received bursaries from the "Ross Secondary Education Committee" and the "Highland Society".
Around 1918 he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he married Catherine Mawhinney, "Kathleen" in June 18 1920. The family moved to the South Down area in 1930, living first at Castlewellan, then Kilkeel before eventually settling at Rostrevor in the late 1950s. Ross and Catherine had two daughters, named Kathleen and Maureen, and a son, Donald, a very talented artist too. Donald Macdonald Ross (1930-2012) was born in Castlewellan. He met his wife, Sheila (born Julia Ester Mooney) at an Irish dance in London, and fell in love. But Sheila immigrated to Canada, where her elder sister had moved to. Donald followed her to Canada, and they were eventually married at Niagara Falls, Ontario, in 1953, on St. Valentine's Day. Donald and Sheila were entrepreneurs and artists, renovating century homes, including the Sir William Mackenzie Inn and restaurant in Kirkfield, Ontario.
Painting in paradise.
Coming back to Ross, for several years he taught art at the Mourne Grange Academy in Kilkeel. At some point, Ross moved with his family to Knockbarragh Youth Hostel. Ross and Kathleen ran the hostel, and Ross used to go out and paint the Mourne's every day. Some footage of Ross and his wife Catherine at the Mournes, films now owned by their family, is preserved. The Mournes are 220 square miles of enchanted forest and fairy trees, mountains stretching to the sea, streams and glorious landscapes where beauty is everywhere. Its stone paths, which can be seen in this watercolour, have guided walkers through the mountains for centuries. Its epic views and panoramic landscapes inspired the magical kingdom of Narnia by the Belfast-born writer CS Lewis.
It is interesting to think that the depiction of mountains, whose absence is today almost unimaginable in landscape art, was until the 18th century considered inappropriate and unpleasant to the eye. Perhaps because Dutch painting, which had a great influence on the landscape, portrayed a very flat land, with no geographical features. In the first quarter of the 18th century a surveyor, Captain Birt, called the mountains "monstrous excrescences... rude and offensive to the sight". Later, Edmund Burke, in his "A Philosophical Into The Origin Of Our Ideas Of The Sublime & Beautiful" (1757), tried to explain the sense of awe, of God's presence, that many experienced with "sublime" natural phenomena such as mountains. The mountains would gradually be incorporated into the landscape painter's thematic 'repertoire'. Those 'sublime' mountains of Northern Ireland proved to be captivating for Ross.
In this painting the artist expresses all that beauty this natural wonderland can provide, the dramatic effect of the clouds on the landscape, the annual magical display of changing colour, now in summer in full swing. Here Ross succeeded in capturing the particular hues of the hills and dales. The artist does not ignore the depiction of the stone, which is as much a part of the Mournes as summer heather, which turns the mountains purple, as can be seen here. One of the features of the Mournes is the beauty of the changing of the seasons, and MacDonald Ross was not indifferent to this, he painted this natural scenery tirelessly. "Day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different", wrote CS Lewis. The Mourne Mountains were created millions of years ago from molten magma. It took 56 millions of years and at least six ice ages before the granite peaks were revealed.
During World War II Ross had a government job visiting farmers in these remote hills of the Mournes, determining their eligibility for a government grant. He always carried his easel and sketch pads in the car, and while performing that work he also took the opportunity to paint. Many of his pictures, like this watercolour, are depictions of that area. During his lifetime Ross produced hundreds of County Down landscape paintings, many of them commissioned by expatriates from all over the world. Although his work in that field is limited, Ross was also attracted to portrait painting, but under the influence of Frank Egginton, a well-known landscape painter who visited Ireland from 1930, and met him in the Mournes, Ross decided to focus his art on watercolour painting.
Ross also lived in Newry and Warrenpoint. During the 1950s he was an art teacher at the Newry Grammar School. Ross had a brass plaque in his studio, which is now kept by his grandson Donald. There, Ross became involved in the artistic life of the town, being hon. secretary of the local Arts Section of C.E.M.A. (Northern Ireland), and also chairman of the Newry Art Society.
Ross MacDonald Ross at work in his studio in 1958.
In the 1960s Kathleen passed away, and Ross moved to a cottage on the New Narrow Water Estate, between Newry and Warrenpoint. Just across the border, Warrenpoint, about 40 miles south of Belfast, is separated from the Republic of Ireland by a narrow straight of water. Ross lived in a cottage on Mount Road, which he portrayed in several paintings. Some of Ross's watercolours from that time and place have been preserved.
Then, paradise became hell.
Ross visited his son Donald in Kirkfield, Canada, in 1977, during a time when peace had been disturbed at Warrenpoint. The town was no longer the idyllic place Ross had called home. In April 1976 a bomb had been detonated in the Ulster Bar by loyalist paramilitaries, and two months later a teacher from Warrenpoint had been mistakenly killed by the British army. Ross died shortly afterwards, in 1978, without witnessing the worst episodes of The Troubles, as the conflict in Northern Ireland between the forces loyal to Britain and the partisans of Irish unity became known. A year after his death an IRA bomb killed 18 young British soldiers near the ruins of Narrow Water Castle, which Ross had depicted so many times in his watercolours. It was the same day that another IRA bomb killed Lord Mountbatten while he was fishing in a coastal village in County Sligo, an episode that was recently part of the script for the popular television series The Crown. The post office, the police barracks and numerous buildings at Warrenpoint were for years targets of the IRA, a town of just under 6,000 people, mostly Catholics. Unfortunately, some of Ross' artwork also became collateral damage to that conflict, when on February 8, 1982 an IRA bomb destroyed the Crown Hotel in Warrenpoint, a place of special significance to the MacDonald Ross family. The room in which many of his paintings hung was completely destroyed by the detonation.
The Crown Hotel after the 1982 bombing
(image from The Old Warrenpoint Forum).
Today, Ross' artwork is frequently auctioned at multiple auction houses, reaching prices ranging from £200 to £700, depending on the size and quality of the painting.
Donald MacDonald Ross, the artist's grandson, kindly provided me with biographical details of his paternal grandfather. He also shared with me a 1958 newspaper article, "An Artist at the Mournes", Newry Telegraph, October 4, from which I was able to obtain some notes on Ross' work.
The discovery of this painting by Ross MacDonald Ross on the Portobello Road's wet asphalt shakes our artistic conscience, and emphasizes the need to recognize the artistic heritage and to preserve it. Probably 99 per cent of visitors to Portobello Road are unable to distinguish an original artwork from a reproduction, so they do not value too much the picture they acquire, and over time, many of these original paintings end up in the rubbish bin or are lost forever. Thus, part of the artistic heritage of Britain is disappearing or remains in oblivion. Perhaps the Ross painting that I rescued from neglect will one day be part of a retrospective exhibition on this artist, an event that this painter would well deserve. At the moment, looking at it reminds you of the painter's extraordinary artistic connection with the Mournes, one of his two great passions. His other great passion was undoubtedly his family.
Looking at his watercolour I can't help but relate it to another artwork I found five months later, when the Portobello Road flea market timidly began to start up again after the first lockdown. That other painting, whose author, a magnificent watercolorist, I was lucky enough to meet in the past, will be the subject of my next post.
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