Thomas Miles Richardson Jnr Returning Home

An original 1851 watercolour painting, Thomas Miles Richardson Junior, Returning Home.

A beautiful, poetically titled subject in watercolour by Thomas Miles Richardson Jnr (1813–1890). The view is no doubt, like other drover subjects by Richardson, in the Scottish Highlands, a landscape favoured by the artist for its rugged splendor. Richardson is known to have painted 'Drovers above Loch Tay', depicting Scotland's traditional cattle drovers en route to the famous tryst at Crieff—where drovers from the north, and their 30,000 cows, would converge on the Perthshire town. Another work by the artist, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (FA.539), shows figures and animals crossing an Aberdeenshire bridge. The emotive trope of 'returning home' is one that had been used since the 18th century watercolourists, who included a peasant returning from market, or a labourer trudging home after work, to imbue a landscape with atmosphere.

During his lifetime, Richardson's colourful watercolours of Northern England and the Scottish Highlands, as well as his scenic panoramas of Italy and Switzerland, enjoyed great popularity and fetched high prices. In 1857, John Ruskin noted of one Highland view, a Scene in Glen Nevis exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society, ‘Mr. Richard [sic] is gradually gaining in manual power, and opposes cobalt and burnt sienna very pleasantly.' The present watercolour achieves an intensity of tone—with masterful juxtaposition blue and red-brown, of cobalt and burnt siena— whilst at the same time capturing the sense of fleeting weather and movement.

A framing label indicates that this painting was one of a pair, the other being 'The Gerry [sic] River, Perthshire'. An additional label of framemakers Frost & Reed Studios Ltd bears the provenance of Col. G.R. Pilkington JP.

Presented in an ornate swept gilt frame and washline mount. Image size: 17.5 x 25.5cm. Frame size: 40.2 x 48.6cm.