The mystery of the artist who caught the slow flow of the Ardle.

Like the previous watercolour, "On the Ardle, Perthshire" is another painting that could perfectly well hang on a museum wall. The technical perfection with which this landscape was executed suggests the hand of a professional painter with great artistic background. We could label the style of this watercolour on paper as "British Impressionism".

I found this artwork on July 10, 2020. The frame of the picture was broken, and I feared that the damp might have damaged the artwork, but inside the frame the painting was intact. The dimensions of the painting are 40 x 30 cm.

The mysterious artist, author of this painting, depicts a stretch of the River Ardle, a tributary of the River Ericht that runs for 10 miles through Strathardle in Perthshire, Scotland. Perth had also been part of the so-called Tour of Scotland, which in the 18th century was practically obligatory for painters. The artists' itinerary in the Highlands included Loch Lomond and Inveraray in the southwest and west, Perth in the east, and Blair Atholl, Glencoe and Loch Leven in the north. 

Here, the artist captures the landscape as if it were a photograph, recreating the view from the river with careful and precise attention to detail. On both banks of the river there are dense forest areas, which the painter depicts with impressionist brushstrokes. The light effect on the water and on the rocks in the foreground are solved with great skill and freedom. One can almost hear the slow flow of the clear waters, and wait for a salmon to jump out of the water.

The unknown author of the painting wrote the title, "The Ardle", at the lower left, and on the right he inscribed a number, "195", just above the date, "1918?". The full title of this painting, "On the Ardle, Perthshire", can be found on an antique label attached to the back of the frame, which also included the artist's name. Unfortunately the label is badly damaged by the passage of time and the poor conservation of the frame, and at present the name of the painter is unrecognisable. Only a few letters are visible: "by John ?heli? (...)". The label and the number at the front make us suppose that the artwork was part of some exhibition, where it was acquired.

At the moment, the identity of the author will remain a mystery, at least for a while. We do know of some artists who painted in that area. The nearest major city to the place depicted in the watercolour is Perth. That is where Effie Gray was born in 1828. And it was precisely there that she met famous art critic John Ruskin, whom she would later marry. In Perth Effie also met her future lover, the pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, whom she would marry in 1855, after getting her marriage to Ruskin annulled. Millais himself painted a series of 21 large-scale landscapes in the Perthshire Highlands between 1870 and 1892. Our watercolour is probably influenced by the way Millais captured those landscapes. If we compare this artwork with that other painting we presented in the October 23rd post, "Go to nature...", in which we also mentioned Ruskin, we can see a notable difference. Our watercolour, like the paintings in the aforementioned series by Millais, does not look much like that picturesque landscape from the Tour of Scotland.  If that one approached the traditional iconography of the Highlands and emphasized the romanticism of nature, depicting the Scottish landscape with poetic grandeur, it could be argued that our watercolour is closer to contemporary photography.