The Sapphire Sea, 1892

<p>Melville who was rightly regarded as the most brilliant watercolourists of his period, developed a stunning and idiosyncratic technique. He attended the RSA schools and from 1878 studied in Paris where he was impressed by the work of the French Realist painters and the Barbizon School. Associated with the Glasgow Boys he was however a restless traveller and soon moved from their Scottish urban and pastoral subjects to more exotic fare from Egypt, Persia and Spain attracted by strong light, brilliant colours, the drama of the bullfight or the bustle of the eastern harbour. </p>