Runciman next turned to the larger undertaking of which the St. Margaret Cupola was but the prologue, and upon which he worked with equal energy, for the ceiling of the Ossian Hall of Penicuik House can hardly have been commenced before the end of 1772, and it was certainly completed during the following year.
It was just ten years previously that “Fingal” (1762) and “Temora” (1763) first appeared, and the controversy regarding their authenticity still raged fiercely. Dr. Johnson and David Hume denied their claim to be regarded as genuine Celtic poems, but they were defended by Lord Kames, Dr. Gregory, and by Dr. Blair, who pointed out their adaptability to the purposes of the painter, as presenting fitting subjects for the exercise of his brush. It was probably upon this suggestion that the Ossian ceiling was commissioned by Sir James Clerk, and commenced by Alexander Runciman.
The centre of the ceiling is occupied by a large elliptical compartment, depicting Ossian old and blind, singing, and accompanying his songs on theharp. In front is seated the white-draped shape of Malvina, and around are grouped a varied crowd of listeners. The distance is a rocky coast, with ruined castles, and a fine expanse of sea, across which white sails are speeding; and above, the clouds take strange, fantastic, half-defined shapes as of spiritual presences, the figures of the vanished heroes of whom the poet sings,—“The awful faces of other times look from the clouds of Crona.” This compartment is surrounded by an ornamental border of gold, which in its turn is enclosed in a wreath of vine-leaves and fruit; and the four corners are occupied by figures symbolical of the four great rivers of Scotland, the Tay, the Spey, the Clyde, and the Tweed,—figures manifestly reminiscent of the work of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel.
Beneath, round the ample cove orvoltoof the room, is ranged a series of smaller subjects from Ossian—“The Valour of Oscar,” “The Death of Oscar,” “The Death of Agandecca,” “The Hunting of Catholda,” one of the finest of the subjects, very graceful in the figure of the nymph drawing a bow; “The Finding of Corban Cargloss,” an attractive moonlit scene; “Golchossa mourning over Lamderg,” “Oina Morval serenading Ossian,” a vigorous subject of “Cormac attacking the Spirit of the Waters,” “The Death of Cormac,” “Scandinavian Wizards at their Incantations,” in which the grotesque is in excess of the terrible, and “Fingal engaging the Spirit of Lodi.”
If we were to criticise the ceiling purely as an example of decorative art, we might well object that the elaboration and wealth of detail in the work is hardly suitable to its position, that designs so placed should have been simpler and more salient in their component parts, and executed in a lighter and more airy scheme of colouring, so as to carry the eye freely upwards. But as an example of poetic art, in its earnestness of aim and vigour of conception, it is deserving of all praise, as one of the very few instances that Scotland has to show of a serious effort to produce amonumental work, a pictorial epic,—an effort honourable alike to the painter and his patron. The art of Runciman, as here displayed, may be regarded as the precursor of the art of David Scott, another of Scotland’s most imaginative painters, who was also powerfully attracted by the Ossianic legends, choosing “Fingal and the Spirit of Lodi” for the subject of one of his earliest works, and in another depicting Ossian himself, not surrounded by sympathetic listeners as in this central compartment by Runciman, but seated alone by the sea-shore, amid the last dying radiance of a sunset, with his harp lying idle by his side.
It is recorded that about 1720 John Alexander, the grandson of George Jamesone of Aberdeen, executed a “Rape of Proserpina” on a staircase in Gordon Castle. After the completion of his work at Penicuik Runciman decorated a church in the Cowgate of Edinburgh (now St. Patrick’s Catholic Chapel) with sacred subjects, of which a portion still remain; and—presumably in humble imitation of the Ossian Hall—Alexander Carse painted an oval subject on the ceiling of the “Pennecuik Parlor” of New Hall, Mid-Lothian, depicting “The Troops of Tweedale in the Forest of Selkirkshire, convened by Royal authority in May 1685, as described in Dr. Pennecuik’s Poems.” This brief list may be said to include almost all the mural art—excepting such as was simply decorative—executed in Scotland during modern times.
The Ossian ceiling formed the subject of a learned and elaborate descriptive pamphlet, published anonymously, in 1773, by A. Kinnaird and W. Creech, Edinburgh; and the painter would appear to have intended to preserve a record of his work—in the manner afterwards adopted by Barry, in the case of the illustrations of “Human Progress,” with which he decorated the walls of the Hall of the Society of Arts in London, for etchings, executed by Runciman’s own hand in a free and somewhat loose style, of the first two subjects of the St. Margaret Cupola, and of“Cormac attacking a Spirit of the Waters,” and “The Finding of Corban Cargloss,” from the Ossian ceiling, are frequently to be met with.
We have not been able to discover in Penicuik House Alexander Runciman’s easel Picture of “Nausicaa at Play with her Maidens,” executed during his residence at Rome, and shown in London, in the Free Society of Artists’ Exhibition of 1767, a work which Allan Cunningham informs us was “painted for Pennycuik”: and, on account of the delicacy and transparency of its colouring, we should be inclined to attribute to John Runciman, who died at Naples at the early age of twenty-four, that sketch of “David with the Head of Goliath,” which has been commonly assigned to the elder of the two brothers. Certainly by John Runciman is the excellent picture of “Belshazzar’s Feast,” hung in the Billiard-room, a work so delicate in its handling, so mellow in the golden and ruddy tones of its colouring, as to support the opinion held by some discerning critics, that this artist’s brief life afforded definite promise of his becoming a far subtler and more refined painter than the better-known member of his family ever was.
In the Drawing-room hang many admirable and interesting works, to a few of which we may direct attention. Chief among them is the noble three-quarter-length of Anthony Triest, Bishop of Ghent, by Rubens, a portrait most characteristic in pose, vigorously lifelike in expression, and accomplished in colour. Another portrait of this prelate, a seated half-length turned to the right, was painted by Van Dyck, Rubens’ great pupil, and etched by his own hand in a plate which was afterwards completed with the graver by Peter de Jode. In the same room is Van Dyck’s rendering of “A Lady of the Coningsby Family,” a graceful full-length, draped in rose-colour, the gloved right hand resting on a flower-pot whichis relieved against a wooded background, and the right foot raised as the figure stands on a flight of stone garden-steps. A bust-sized male portrait of an unknown subject also bears the name of Rubens, and, by whatever hand, it is certainly an admirable example of Flemish art. The costume is black with a piped ruff; the face worn, the brow furrowed, the hair yellowish, slightly silvered with age, the thick beard and moustache of a ruddy colour, and the flesh-tones most attractive in the quietude and cool grey quality of their shadows. By Zeeman, an esteemed Dutch painter of naval subjects, known, too, as an etcher of much directness and simplicity of method, is a large sea-piece, with shipping and a great expanse of sky in which the clouds are beginning to grow mellow towards the sunset; and by Melchior Hondecoeter we have a vigorous picture of “Fighting Cocks,” firmly painted, and effective in the contrast of the white plumage of the nearer bird to the glowing brown and ruddy tones of the rest of the picture.
The Library, a particularly sunny and spacious room on the upper floor, contains in addition to its books—which, as we have already said, include those bequeathed to the Baron by Boerhaave, his early friend,—a fine and extensive collection of prints, duly catalogued and arranged in volumes according to their various schools. Among the rest are some rare Dürer items, and a set of John Clerk’s etchings in their progressive states, along with many original sketches by his hand.
Over the fireplace is inlet in the wainscoting an attractive subject representative of “Music,” executed ingrisailleon canvas, in clever simulation of a marble bas-relief. It is signed by its painter, Jacob de Wit, a native of Amsterdam, born 1695, died 1754, who “attained a marvellous excellence in the imitation of sculpture of all kinds of materials, bronze, wood, plaster, and particularly white marble, in which he produced such complete illusion that even the practised eye is deceived.” His most notablework of this kind was the decoration, in 1736, of a hall in the Hôtel de Ville of Amsterdam; and it is further stated by Kugler that “a favourite subject with the master was the representation of pretty children in the taste of Fiammingo.” The present picture, in the satisfying arrangement of its composition and in the grace of its flowing lines, possesses a more legitimate artistic value than could come from any merely imitative dexterity in rendering the effect of sculpture by means of painting. The musicians are a party of naked, chubby children. The figure of their leader is an especially charming one, standing holding up a music-book in one hand, beating time with a roll of papers held as a baton in the other, and singing with open mouth; his raised face, with the soft hair clustering about the rounded cheeks, wearing an entranced expression which embodies the very spirit of melody. Beside him one of his infant musicians touches the wires of a lyre, another bends over a great mandoline, of which a third is tightening the strings, and a fourth breathes softly on the flute.
At the entrance to the Library door are placed two large glass cases, one filled with natural history specimens, the other containing the valuable collection of Roman remains, in metal, pottery, coins, etc., accumulated by Baron Clerk, which it would require the skill of an archæologist rightly to estimate. Among them is a curious and most interesting ivory carving, inscribed, on a parchment label, in the Baron’s handwriting, “An Antient piece of Sculpture on the Tooth of a Whale,—it was found by John Adair, Geographer, in the North of Scotland, Anno 1682, all the figures are remarkable.” In this year Adair, the Geographer for Scotland, was appointed by the Privy Council of Scotland to make a survey of the kingdom and maps of the shires, of which only a portion was published. The carving represents a crowned queen, seated holding a lapdog on her knees; with a knight,wearing a surcoat over chain-armour, and bearing a sword and a shield blazoned with achevron chequé, standing on her left; and on her right a musician playing on a crowde, an old instrument resembling a violin; while between these, round the rest of the ivory, is a row of female figures, wearing long flowing robes, standing with clasped hands, that beside the musician holding a palm-branch. The carving is described and figured in Dr. Daniel Wilson’s “Prehistoric Annals of Scotland.” Dr. Wilson considers it to be a queen piece of a chess set, and assigns it to the fourteenth century.
In the Charter-room are preserved, in addition to documents, many curious miscellaneous relics of an artistic and personal sort. The MSS. include the account-books of the family, extending well into the seventeenth century, kept with the minutest accuracy, and containing many entries of great interest to the student of the social manners of the past. There are also voluminous devotional compositions, commonplace-books, etc., by the first Baronet; and theMS.“History of my Life,” and the two volumes of the “Journal of my Travells for 5 years Through Holland, Germaine, Italy, France, and Flanders,” by the second Baronet, Baron Clerk, along with the MSS. of several of his published and unpublished historical and antiquarian pamphlets.
A somewhat grim development of portraiture is seen in a couple of waxen death-masks—one of them shows the face of Lady Margaret Stuart, the Baron’s much-loved first wife—each casketed in its little wooden case or shrine. The habit of preserving such masks seems to have been common in Scotland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,—we remember that the Abertarff sale included several representing various members of the Lovat family: a survival, onemay call it, of the old Roman custom of preserving the waxen images of ancestors, which prevailed, too, in France, in the days when Clouet was summoned to Rambouillet, to cast the waxen effigy of the dead FrancisI.
In the Charter-room are various interesting old miniatures and drawings, among the latter one of a cupid and a griffin, attributed to Raphael; one by Guido; a couple of designs by Inigo Jones—one marked “given me by the Earl of Burlington in 1727” (the year of the Baron’s visit to London), “I very much value this and the other drawing by Inigo. John Clerk, 1744;” and the original sketch for the picture of St. Cecilia, still preserved at Penicuik, by Francesco Imperiali, an artist of repute in his day, who died at Rome in 1741, under whom the Baron studied art when in Italy, and who was afterwards one of the instructors of Allan Ramsay, the portrait-painter.
Another relic of the Baron’s days in Italy is the small marble bust of Cicero—preserved in the Charter-room—which, as he tells us in his “History,” was bequeathed to him by “Montignia Chapigni, a learned antiquarian and philosopher.” Yet another is a little wooden casket, fragrant still with a sweet old-world perfume, as we open the drawers filled with neatly stoppered bottles. This is the “Box of Chymical Medicines, still at Penicuik,” which was presented to the Baron on his leaving Florence, along with “all the variety of wines and sweet meats which his country produced,” by the Grand Duke CosimoIII., who had previously honoured the young Scotsman by bestowing on him “a patent under the privy seal signed by himself and his Secretary of State, the Marquise de Ricardi, appointing me a Gentleman of his Bedchamber, which patent lies now in the Charter-room.”
On one of the shelves is placed another curious family relic, a basket filled with artist’s materials, marked “Oil colours brought from Rome by Uncle Sandy,” a son of the first Baronet, that AlexanderClerk who figures in the Baronage as “bred a painter,” and whose name appears, in 1729, on the original indenture of the Edinburgh School of St. Luke, as a member of that first academy founded in Scotland for the study of art, in which, six years later, Strange the engraver received instruction. In this old document, so significant in the history of painting in our country, and now fittingly in the possession of the Royal Scottish Academy, Richard Cooper, Strange’s master, appears as Secretary. Among the other signatures are those of James Clerk, Alexander’s elder brother, afterwards third Baronet of Penicuik; his nephew Hugh Clerk, Junr., who “served with the allied army in Germany, and died soon after the battle of Minden”; the two Ramsays; “Ja. Norie” and “Jas. Norie, Junior”; John Patoun, whose portrait of Thomson the poet is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London; John Alexander, the portrait-painter, who engraved the family group of his grandfather, George Jamesone of Aberdeen; and William Denune, known by his portraits of Thomas and Mrs. Ruddiman, of Professor Robert Simson of Glasgow (1746), and of the Rev. William Harper, Episcopal clergyman in Leith (1745).
There is one other of the contents of the Charter-room to which we must refer, a volume containing a complete set of Turner’s “Liber Studiorum” prints, evidently an original subscriber’s copy; most of the plates are in excellent impressions, and some are proofs.
For permission to examine these, and all the other Art Treasures at Penicuik House—to many of which we have been unable even to refer—we have to express our grateful thanks to Sir George Clerk, the owner of the mansion, and to the Dowager Lady Clerk, its present occupant.
(Seepage 30.)
We have just had an opportunity of examining the portraits of Sir James Clerk, the third Baronet, and Elizabeth Cleghorn, his wife, in the possession of Miss Eliott Lockhart, at 17 Rutland Street, Edinburgh. In each the figure is seen to the waist, within a painted oval. The Baronet is clad in a yellowish pink gown, worn over a red vest, with the shirt unbuttoned at the throat. The face, turned slightly to the right, has clear-cut features, full blue eyes, and dark eyebrows, the hair being entirely concealed by a blue cap. The left hand is laid on the top of a folio volume, resting on a table to the right, which is covered with a brilliantly patterned cloth; and a green curtain appears behind to the left. In the portrait of Lady Clerk the face is seen in three-quarters to the left, and has pale yellow hair and eyebrows, and blue eyes. The costume is a white dress worn low at the throat, and a blue mantle. A tree-trunk appears behind the head, and a wooded landscape to the right. Each picture is signed with the name of a portrait-painter which we have not elsewhere met with—“Gul: Mosman pingebat 1739.” The handling of the works is hard and definite.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:[1]A three-quarters length portrait of the younger Aikman, with a grave earnest face, clad in a long-skirted grey coat, and holding a sketch in his hand, is in the possession of the representative of the family at The Ross, Hamilton. It is an excellent example of the elder Aikman’s portraiture.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]A three-quarters length portrait of the younger Aikman, with a grave earnest face, clad in a long-skirted grey coat, and holding a sketch in his hand, is in the possession of the representative of the family at The Ross, Hamilton. It is an excellent example of the elder Aikman’s portraiture.
[1]A three-quarters length portrait of the younger Aikman, with a grave earnest face, clad in a long-skirted grey coat, and holding a sketch in his hand, is in the possession of the representative of the family at The Ross, Hamilton. It is an excellent example of the elder Aikman’s portraiture.