Unloading the Catch, Newhaven, 1861

framed dimensions: 54 x 63 cm

signed and dated lower centre

PROVENANCE:
Long-term loan National Galleries of Scotland, 63182

Samuel Bough’s admiration of Turner emerged with his most successful later subject, coastal scenes. He was not restricted to Scotland, painting in London and extensively in the north of England but it was drama of the Scottish coast to which he returned, the great seas, skies the activity of shipping and the bustle of human activity on the quays. In larger works like St Andrews (Noble Grossart) and The Rocket Cart (Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery) we see an artist embracing the complexity of detail in genre, or narrative works. This is no less true in Unloading the Catch, Newhaven and this and many of his most successful and ambitious paintings seem as much in the tradition of David Wilkie as McCulloch, as well as rivaling Wilkie in the delivery of character and purpose in his painted figures. Under a benign sky the herring fleet is in, with boats tied up to the quay, where a man stands in the stern of a Fifie which still has its lug sail hoisted and three fishwives lean forward to receive the catch. The painting has the pictorial sophistication and strong colour praised in the next generation of Scottish painters, the pupils of Robert Scott Lauder at the Trustees Academy, like William McTaggart and George Paul Chalmers, and has some modern elements. The boat entering the harbour and composition on the left is similar to the truncated racehorses deployed by Degas twenty or so years later. The painting is full of observation in detail while all is enlivened by a consistent, sparkling light source from the west. A sister picture, of identical size is also held at Tullie House in Carlisle, and another Newhaven subject was exhibited at the RSA in 1856, entitled Newhaven Harbour, During the Herring Fishing, one of 216 works he exhibited at the RSA in his lifetime.