Waller Hugh Paton RSA RSW 1828-1895
Waller Hugh Paton was born in Wooers Alley, Dunfermline, Fife, the youngest son of the three children of Joseph Neil Paton (1797-1874). He began his career designing damasks for his father and then studied watercolour painting briefly in Edinburgh with John Adam Houston (1813-1884), but was largely self-taught. He was equally skilled in watercolour and oil paintings, his oils usually of a smaller scale. More often his landscapes were of mountains, lochs, and trees, with meticulously detailed rocks and plants. He was well known for his moonlit scenes and rather hectic sunsets. He did sometimes include people, but they are usually small and incidental.
There are very few paintings by Paton in public collections. His diploma picture, Lamlash Bay, Isle of Arran, signed and dated 1865, is in the Royal Scottish Academy, and the National Trust for Scotland acquired the oil Outlet of Loch Achray (exh. Royal Scottish Academy, 1859) as part of the contents of Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, in 1984. Paton was a successful painter and large sums were paid for his work in his lifetime, though his reputation declined with the reaction against Pre-Raphaelitism. It is only in recent years that people have begun to recognize his undeniable quality, the mastery of his technique, both in oil and watercolour, and his sympathetic interpretation of the Scottish countryside.
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Christmas
at The Fine Art Society 4 - 23 Dec 2020 Edinburgh -
A History in Small Pictures
31 Jul - 29 Aug 2020 EdinburghA survey of Scottish art over three centuries. Diminutive paintings by, amongst others, John Clerk of Eldin, Sir David Wilkie, Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Henry Raeburn, Sam Bough, John MacWhirter, E...Read more -
Signatures Of Scottish Art
140 Years of the Fine Art Society 10 Jun - 9 Jul 2016 EdinburghExhibited during the year that The Fine Art Society celebrated its 140th anniversary, the occasion was marked in our Edinburgh gallery with the exhibition Signatures of Scottish Art. The show...Read more -
Scottishness in Art
1750-1980 5 Jul - 7 Sep 2013 EdinburghThe eighteenth century saw Scotland take a giant step forward. It opened trade with English colonies and saw Scotland rise culturally, socially and economically. It was against this backdrop that...Read more -
Harvey to Houston
Scottish Painting 20 May - 18 Jun 2011 EdinburghThis exhibition included work by a number of important names in Scottish Art from the nineteenth and twentieth century; from the genre painter Sir George Harvey to the work of...Read more