A SCOTTISH CATALYST: THE PAINTINGS OF DAVID ALLAN
(First published in COUNTRY LIFE, August 19th, 1965) TO label David Allan with such epithets as. "the Scottish Hogarth" or "the Scottish Zoffany," is completely to misunderstand his contribution to the development of painting in Scotland. Allan was no mere stylistic copyist, neither was he simply a follower of other artists' successful fashions. He was an experimenter, an explorer in the subject matter of paint, and as such his influence upon the development of painting modes in Scotland in the late 18th century was above all that of a catalyst. Allan worked in the generation between Ramsay and Raeburn. His training in art and his subsequent career are interesting in one respect because of his involvement with two of the academies of art that flourished in Scotland at the time. As a young man he studied for a period at the academy founded by the Foulis brothers in Glasgow in the 1750s, and this academy, modelled closely upon the great teaching-schools of Rome, stood alone in Scotland in providing a sophisticated and thorough grounding in the fine arts. It was also, incidentally, alone in Britain at this time in providing funds for its most promising students to carry forward their studies into Italy, and this antedates the Royal Academy's travelling scholarships by some years. Allan was thus one of a comparatively small number of Scottish painters who had the advantage of this formal education in art before their Italian years, instead of the traditional but more chancy system of training by apprenticeship. When, later in life, Allan settled in Edinburgh, he held a post for ten years as Master of the Trustees' Drawing Academy and as such should have been in a position to influence numbers of young painters at this establishment. That Allan's influence was considerable cannot be doubted, but its exercise must have been unofficial, for the Drawing Academy in Edinburgh was controlled and financed by the Board of Trustees for the Manufactures of Scotland and had of necessity to concentrate especially upon the improvement of industrial design. There is, in fact, written into the Trustees' minutes of this period the actual refusal of admission to one young man on the grounds that he wanted to study to become purely a painter of portraits. To say that Allan's Italian years were the turning point of his career is to repeat the obvious. In Rome, where he remained off and on from 1765 to 1778, his style reached a sophistication that, sadly, it lost after his return to the less competitive life of Scotland. Apart from improving his style, Rome widened his ideas, and in his drawings and water-colours from Italy one can see the birth of that interest in contemporary genre that was to become one of his signal contributions to painting at home. Allan's Neapolitan Dance, for example, anticipates the whole string of highland weddings that he later produced, and for his character studies of Edinburgh vendors one can find the closest and most persuasive comparison in Gaetano Zompini's Street-Cries of Venice, which Allan must surely have known. Similarly, from his Italian visit there are literary illustrations (for example, to Voltaire), and sketches of historic incidents that show his developing interest in these subjects; and for history painting, informed painting of literary themes, as well as for domestic genre, art in Scotland owes more to Allan than to any other 18th-century painter, with the possible exception, for histories, of the Runcimans. But the purpose of this article is principally to study Allan's portraiture, and here again the same catalystic effect can be noticed. Allan's especial contribution to the main stream of portrait-painting in the north was his emphasis on and development, first of all, of the cabinet full-length portrait, and, extending from this, of the conversation piece. In the nicest of all quotations from his correspondence (December, 1780), he describes his intentions: "I would bend toward the small Domestic and conversational style, as it tends most to improvement and the most useful as it is the means of everlastingly joining friends together on the canvace, and at the price of ten guineas the figure." The italics are inserted, and I think never has a painter of portraits justified his purpose in more sympathetic terms. Among Allan's first conversation pieces was the Atholl Family Group, done in the summer of 1780. But in a letter describing this picture Allan says that he has "done some other familys particularly Lord Hopes," and this refers to one of his most charming achievements, the Hope Family Group at their bathing place beside Hopetoun, a large picture which is no longer to be seen at Hopetoun House but remains privately with another branch of the family. This introduces a family that stood Allan in good stead both in Italy and in Scotland, and in the course of three or four winters spent as a member of the Hopetoun household Allan probably executed more comissions for the Hopes than for any other single family. At Hopetoun today there are charming groups of the little Hope girls (Fig. 5), of Henry Hope and his tutor in Rome and various other smaller pieces. One group by Allan—of Charles Hope Were and his sisters -comes so close in approach and accomplishment to Zoffanv that it has in its time been exhibited and published as the latter's work, and another, the group of Connoisseurs recently acquired by the National Gallery of Scotland, is also among the best of Allan's paintings. The sitters in this have so far defied identification, although small figures, 1 to 4, beside each individual in the group may refer to a numbered key on the reverse of the original canvas (the picture has been relined), the provision of which was a not uncommon habit of Allan's. In most of Allan's conversations there is a definite woodenness and a. slight ineptness about his postures, and without doubt these involved canvases result from personal portrait-sketches and work from a lay figure. One essential document that has so far been ignored in all that has been written on Allan is the sale catalogue of his studio contents at the time of his death (1796); and the lists of pencil and oil-sketches for his various groups and portraits show not only the output of his pencil and brush hut also the laboriousness of his personal productive process. Taking Allan's portrait work as a whole it shows, in fact, a curious dichotomy. On the one hand there is the general run of his work both before and after his visit to Italy: frequently naïve and usually impossible to confuse with more fashionable and proficient hands —although at. the same time endowed with a certain charm. Against this, there is a much more competent, more sophisticated group of portraits, which show a painter so in command that he could be compared with, for example, Dance or Batoni. The definitive picture in this group is his Self-portrait (Fig. 2), done in Rome in 1770 and a very Batoniesque accomplishment. Again, and very close to this, there is the Paul Mellon Thomas Graham, shown in the Royal Academy last winter. From the post-Italian years there are his portraits of his friend James Tassie and Tassie's wife, both things of technical excellence, and his charming Jean Duff in Glasgow, a fair comparison with Allan Ramsay's painting of his wife. Allan's full-length portrait of Sir William Hamilton at Naples (1775, Fig. 3) is another of his more sophisticated pieces, and contrasts strongly with his earlier picture of Hamilton with his wife (1770, Fig. 4). This smaller canvas is interesting for two reasons: first, because it shows a favourite and repeated trick of Allan's of including a figure, here a volante, moving out of the canvas to one side; second, because it presents an unusual conundrum in dating. It is signed on the reverse "1770"; Sir William Hamilton's Correggio shown on the wall behind was sold to Lord Radnor in 1771, and yet Hamilton is described "K.B." on the paper on the floor and in fact wears the Bath insignia - an honour he received only in 1772. Illustrations: 1, Collection Sir James Hunter Blair; 2, National Galleries of Scotland; 3, National Portrait Gallery; 4, Collection The Earl of Cathcart; 5, Collection The Marquess of Linlithgow; 6, Collection The Earl of Haddington. © Country Life |
1.—THE FAMILY OF SIR JAMES HUNTER BLAIR, PAINTED BY DAVID ALLAN (1744-1796) IN 1785. "Allan was an experimenter, an explorer in the subject matter of paint; his influence was above all that of a catalyst"
2.—A SELF-PORTRAIT INSCRIBED
"D. ALLAN PINXT ROMA 1770." David Allan was one of the few 18th-century Scottish painters to win a scholarship to Italy. 3.—SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AT NAPLES, PAINTED BY DAVID ALLAN IN 1775
4.—SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND HIS WIFE, Dated 1770 but possibly altered later.
5.—DETAIL FROM JEMIMA AND LUCY HOPE, ONE OF THE MANY PICTURES BY ALLAN IN THE HOPETOUN HOUSE COLLECTION
6.—THE HON. HENRY HOPE (1755-1776), SON OF THE 2nd EARL OF HOPETOUN
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