JAMES WATTERSTON HERALD (SCOTTISH 1859-1914)
THE TRAVELLING SHOW
Signed, watercolour
44.5cm x 62.5cm (17.5in x 24.5in)
Sotheby's Gleneagles, Scottish & Sporting Pictures & Sculpture, 28 August 2002, lot (sold £12,000)
Few Scottish watercolourists can claim a style as distinctive as that of James Watterston Herald. His innovation was to depict his subject by painting only the light, in its manifold hues, using fluid and suggestive strokes of watercolour or pastel. This effect was often achieved by working on a black, grey or brown ground, which allowed his coloured highlights to sing. Herald was largely self-taught, which does something to explain the originality of his technique. It is also evident that throughout his life he was content to follow his own path with little heed to convention or popular artistic trends. Yet his talent spoke for itself, and he was hailed by his contemporaries as a rival to Melville as a watercolourist, and to Whistler as a pastel artist. Herald worked in Edinburgh in the 1880s and London in the 1890s, but from 1901 returned to his native Angus where he would remain forthwith: it better suited his reclusive tendencies. His removal from the London art scene likely prevented his reputation from flourishing in the manner it might otherwise have during his lifetime. Fortunately, today his importance is better appreciated. The series from which this work derives has traditionally been believed to depict Colonel William F. Cody, aka ‘Buffalo Bill’, during his visit to Arbroath in 1904. However, new research suggests that it actually features ‘Buff Bill’, a lesser-known showman, thought to be the Peebles-born William Kayes.We are grateful to Tom F. Cunningham, author of Your Fathers the Ghosts: Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Scotland and creator of the British National Buffalo Bill Archive website for his help in cataloguing this work.