Hall’s of Shrewsbury staged a spring auction on March 23, and I have plucked a picture from it.
Children Playing on the Sea Shore by Hugh Cameron RSA, RSW, ROI (1835-1918), shows a mother and ten bairns paddling and playing in the shallows.
Rocky shoreline, sky, clouds and tiny figures come together in a gentle and rather lyrical Scottish-leaning scene.
Childhood subjects a speciality
Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1907, the picture measured 24 x 40 inches in its handsome contemporary frame.
Cameron, who had trained under Robert Scott Lauder at The Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, made a specialty of childhood subjects – though not always depicting them in the innocent joy of growing up.
He last appeared in this column 20 years ago when I featured his sombre and evocative Funeral of a Little Girl on the Riviera.
Painted in 1881 it was once described as “one of the most pathetic pictures in the Corporation collections.”
Broughty Ferry connection
It is also one of the great pictures at The McManus and entered the gallery through the artist’s acquaintance with the Broughty Ferry businessman and art collector, Sir James Guthrie Orchar.
Cameron and Orchar were friends and travelling companions of the Scottish landscapist William McTaggart, and there is no surprise that their open seascapes resemble each other’s output.
You can see parallels, too, in the work of Robert Gemmell Hutchison and Robert McGregor, both who were wedded to childhood subjects.
What a pleasure it is to walk around The McManus and to see this brilliant ‘Scottish School’ in its glory – and not least Orchar’s championing of the Robert Scott Lauder group.
Cameron’s Children Playing on the Sea Shore took £3600 at Hall’s.
