ARTIST: ATTRIBUTED TO Robert Ranald McIan (British, Scottish, 1803 - 1856)
NAME: Scottish Boy with Flute and Dog
YEAR: 1850
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: 1 1/2" scratch in lower right corner. Some craquelure. Some paint losses/ inpainting along lower edge.
SIGHT SIZE: 13 x 18 inches / 33 x 45 cm
FRAME SIZE: 18 x 23 inches / 45 x 58 cm
SIGNATURE: lower left
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
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SKU#: 118448
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BIOGRAPHY:
Robert Ronald McIan was a Scottish actor and painter. He is best known for romanticised depictions of Scottish clansmen, their battles and domestic life.His wife, Fanny McIan, was a painter and early teacher of art to women.McIan was born in Scotland in 1803. He became an actor with the joint company of the Theatre Royals in Bristol and Bath before making his way to London. In 1838 he played at the Covent Garden Theatre and at Drury Lane in the following year. He gained a reputation for playing Highlanders on the stage, at a time when the novels of Sir Walter Scott had revived interest in Highland culture.It's not clear when he gave up the stage to devote himself to painting. He played the jester in the Eglinton Tournament of 1839 and the 1885 DNB says he retired in that year. A letter from Charles Dickens mentions seeing McIan perform on 23 June 1841, not long before McIan's wife started a steady job as a teacher.McIan learnt to paint whilst he was an actor, and submitted his first landscape to the Royal Academy in 1836. He exhibited in the Suffolk Street Gallery in 1835 and 1837 whilst acting at the newly rebuilt English Opera House. His 1838 portrait of novelist Anna Maria Hall (Mrs S.C. Hall) was praised by Camilla Toulmin.He is perhaps best known for his illustrations in The Clans of The Scottish Highlands, published in 1845 on the centenary of the Jacobite Rising with text by James Logan. It proved so popular that it was reissued in 1857, after his death. His depictions of clansmen fanned the romantic revival of interest in Gaeldom that was led by Queen Victoria, to whom the book was dedicated.McIan's early paintings concentrated on scenes from domestic life in the Highlands, such as illicit whisky stills and women grinding corn. These culminated in the 1848 sequel to the Clans book, entitled Gaelic Gatherings: Or The Highlanders at Home, on the Heath, the River and the Loch.In later life his works increasingly took on overtly nationalistic subjects, celebrating the exploits of Highland soldiers against the English and overseas. Paintings of the 79th Cameron Highlanders were commissioned by Colonel Lauderdale Maule to celebrate the end of his ten-year colonelcy of the regiment in December 1852. An Incident in the Revolutionary War of America showed the 71st Fraser Highlanders' heroic defense at the Battle of Stono Ferry and was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1854.McIan was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1852 and died at Hampstead, north London, on 13 December 1856.