BEN NEVIS PAINTED BY JAMES ALFRED AÏIKEN

 

JAMES ALFRED AITKEN (1846-1897)

Ben Nevis (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)

United KIngdom  (Scotland)

In  Ben Nevis- The First Snow, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre

The mountain 

Ben Nevis  (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)  in Scottish Gaelic: Beinn Nibheis is the highest mountain in the British Isles, located in Scotland, at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands, close to the town of Fort William.
The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 100,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Pony Track from Glen Nevis. The 700 metre - 2,300 ft cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.
The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period are still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.
More about Ben Nevis 

The painter
James Alfred Aitken was a Scottish landscape painter.
Aitken studied art with Horatio McCulloch, before moving to Dublin. There he attended the Royal Dublin Society's school, and had Henry MacManus as teacher.]
In 1872 Aitken moved to Glasgow. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, Glasgow Institute and Royal Hibernian Academy.


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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BEN NEVIS BY CECIL ARTHUR HUNT

CECIL ARTHUR HUNT (1873-1965)

Ben Nevis (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)

Great Britain - Scotland




The mountain 

Ben Nevis  (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)  in Scottish Gaelic: Beinn Nibheis is the highest mountain in the British Isles, located in Scotland, at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands, close to the town of Fort William.

The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 100,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Pony Track from Glen Nevis. The 700m  (2,300 ft) cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.

The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period are still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.

The first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis was made on 17 August 1771 by James Robertson, an Edinburgh botanist, who was in the region to collect botanical specimens. Another early ascent was in 1774 by John Williams, who provided the first account of the mountain's geological structure. John Keats climbed the mountain in 1818, comparing the ascent to "mounting ten St. Pauls without the convenience of a staircase".  The following year William MacGillivray, who was later to become a distinguished naturalist, reached the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". 

It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdhui.

In 2000, the Ben Nevis Estate, comprising all of the south side of the mountain including the summit, was bought by the Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust.

The painter 
Cecil Arthur Hunt was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, studying Classics and Law, and being called to the Bar in 1899. He treated painting and writing as serious pastimes until 1925, when he was elected to the full membership of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours. He then relinquished his legal career to become a professional painter.
Hunt had first exhibited in 1900, at the Alpine Club Galleries, and had held his first major show a year later, alongside E Home Bruce at the Ryder Gallery. From the first, he established himself as an atmospheric painter of mountains, especially of the Alps and Dolomites. However, he was soon accepted as a master of a great variety of topographies, for he exhibited the products of his wide travels frequently and extensively. Favourite destinations included the West Country, the West Coast of Scotland, the Rhone Valley, Northern Italy, Rome and Taormina. From 1911, until his death, Hunt lived at Mallord House in Chelsea, especially designed for him by Sir Ralph Knott to include a large studio on the ground floor. During the summer months he and his family retreated to the farm estate of Foxworthy, on the edge of Dartmoor.
Hunt showed work regularly at the Royal Academy (from 1912), the Royal Society of British Artists (from 1914) and the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (from 1918). He was elected a member of the RBA in 1914, an associate of the RWS in 1919, and a full member six years later. He acted as the Vice-President of the RWS for a three-year period from 1930. His many substantial solo shows included six at the Fine Art Society (1919-34) and one at Colnaghi’s (1945). Following his death, in 1965,  he was the subject of a large memorial show at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours.
Chris Beetles has done much to revive interest in the work of Cecil Arthur Hunt. He mounted a large scale retrospective exhibition in 1996 at his London gallery, on the exact site of the artist’s first substantial show in 1901. The retrospective was accompanied by a definitive catalogue.

BEN NEVIS PAINTED BY SIDNEY RICHARD PERCY

 SIDNEY RICHARD PERCY (1821-1886) 

Ben Nevis (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)

Great Britain - Scotland

In Carn Dearg and Ben Nevis from Achintee 

The mountain 

Ben Nevis  (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)  in Scottish Gaelic: Beinn Nibheis is the highest mountain in the British Isles, located in Scotland, at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands, close to the town of Fort William.
The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 100,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Pony Track from Glen Nevis. The 700 metre - 2,300 ft cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.
The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period are still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.
The first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis was made on 17 August 1771 by James Robertson, an Edinburgh botanist, who was in the region to collect botanical specimens. Another early ascent was in 1774 by John Williams, who provided the first account of the mountain's geological structure. John Keats climbed the mountain in 1818, comparing the ascent to "mounting ten St. Pauls without the convenience of a staircase".  The following year William MacGillivray, who was later to become a distinguished naturalist, reached the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdhui.
The summit observatory was built in the summer of 1883, and would remain in operation for 21 years. The first path to the summit was built at the same time as the observatory and was designed to allow ponies to carry up supplies, with a maximum gradient of one in five.  The opening of the path and the observatory made the ascent of the Ben increasingly popular, all the more so after the arrival of the West Highland Railway in Fort William in 1894.  Around this time the first of several proposals was made for a rack railway to the summit, none of which came to fruition.
In 2000, the Ben Nevis Estate, comprising all of the south side of the mountain including the summit, was bought by the Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust.

The painter 
Sidney Richard Percy had his greatest success painting landscapes of grazing cattle, typically set against backgrounds of distant mountains and cloudy skies. The prevailing hues of his landscapes are earth tones and soft greens, accentuated by a variety of pastel hues. The detail in his work is part of its appeal, and "it was remarked that his rocks and stones were sufficiently accurate to have served as illustrations to the writings of Sir Roderick Murchison, the popular 19th-century geologist." Llyn-y-Ddinas, North Wales, one of his more popular works on the internet, displays these qualities. He also painted landscapes of farm fields, wheel-rutted country roads, and the occasional boat scene on a lake. Although he generally painted in oils, a number of small watercolors on cardboard exist, typically unsigned, that are his work. The family, and his son the painter Herbert Sidney Percy in particular, referred to these as "potboilers", meaning that they were quickly, and often crudely executed, yet easily and cheaply sold "to put food on the table" when working on larger, more time-consuming oils for exhibition, or commissions. Many of these watercolor "potboilers" were done in the field, and then brought back to the studio to refer to when executing a more formal oil on canvas.
Sidney Richard Percy was extremely popular during the early part of his career, which for a short time brought him a fair amount of income. Among his patrons during this time was Prince Albert the Royal consort who in 1854 gave Percy's landscape of A view of Llyn Dulyn, North Wales, which had just been exhibited at the Royal Academy, as a gift to his wife Queen Victoria. This painting still hangs today in the Royal Collection. Unfortunately Sidney Richard Percy outlived his popularity, and the art world was more excited about impressionism and other styles than landscapes when he died. Today though, his work is much sought after, and his better paintings bring much higher prices in auction than any of those of his brethren in the Williams family.
When the Athenaeum in 1886 (i. 592) ran an obituary for Sidney Richard Percy they called him, "the well-known and popular painter, founder of the so-called School of Barnes . . ." Although depending on the context of what is meant by the so-called Barnes School, this is a bit of an injustice to his father Edward Williams, whom it might be argued is the founder of the Barnes School of painters, but it illustrates the popularity that Sidney Richard Percy held with the art-buying public of his day.