Bonhams 1793 : William McTaggart, RSA RSW (British, 1835-1910) Showery Harvest Day 106.5 x 141 cm. (42 x 55 1/2 in.)

PROVENANCE:
A.J.W. Taitt
With Aitken Dott & Son, Edinburgh
With Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, London

LITERATURE:
J.L. Caw, William McTaggart, - A Biography and an Appreciation, James Maclehose & Sons, Glasgow, 1917, pp. 135, 156, 273

Painted at Sandy Dean near Edinburgh, McTaggart's favourite autumn sketching ground, this is one of a series of large canvases painted 1898-99 which Caw thought among his most notable.

McTaggart developed an indigenous form of 'impressionism' in the 1870s almost entirely independent of his French contemporaries, and he made few perfunctory trips to the continent. This monumental picture is a tour de force of expressive, intuitive brushwork, capturing light effects whorling around the lush foliage which stands off-centre, counterbalanced by the lines of sheaves which introduce an element of man-made geometry to nature.