Scottish National Gallery opens major exhibit of Arthur Melville works

PanARMENIAN.Net - A major exhibition devoted to the unique achievements of one of the most radical and exciting Scottish artists of the 19th century is to open at the Scottish National Gallery this autumn. Arthur Melville: Adventures in Colour will be the first museum survey of the artist’s work for more than 35 years, and will bring together over 70 watercolours and oil paintings, including works that have not been seen in public for more than a century, Digital Spy reports.

Arthur Melville was one of the finest British watercolour painters of the Victorian – and indeed any – era. The audacity and drama of his compositions, his original, highly personal technique, and above all, his ability to evoke colour and light with the brilliance of stained-glass, mark him out as a painter of outstanding talent.

This comprehensive retrospective exhibition will encompass Melville's extraordinarily rich and varied career, charting his (sometimes hairraising) adventures in the Middle East, Spain and North Africa; his relationship with ‘Glasgow Boy’ painters such as James Guthrie, Joseph Crawhall and E A Walton; his re-interpretations of the Scottish landscape and his paintings of modern life; his daringly abstracted oil paintings; and the unmatched virtuosity and excitement of his crowd scenes.

Melville’s watercolour technique was so remarkable that critics were compelled to invent a new term for it; the word ‘blottesque’ was coined to describe the way he painted in ‘blots’ and ‘spots’, deploying colour in a manner that anticipated the work of early twentieth-century artists, such as the Fauves.

In person Melville was a vital presence – athletic, intrepid, gregarious and charismatic. His extended travels in 1881-2, which took him to Cairo, Karachi and Baghdad, and then overland to Constantinople, provided source material for his most spectacular watercolours and established his reputation as an artist-adventurer. Ever restless, his exploits in the Middle East were followed by later journeys to Orkney, Paris, Venice, Spain and North Africa, all of which inspired, in different ways, his highly individual art .