Arthur Melville A.R.S.A., R.W.S., R.S.W. (1855-1904)
After the play
Arthur Melville was born in Angus, Scotland in 1858. He took up painting at an early age, attending evening classes in Edinburgh before studying full-time at R.S.A. under John Campbell Noble. In 1872 he went to Paris where he was introduced to the work of the French Impressionists by Robert Weir Allan.
His remarkable colour-sense, which is so notable a feature of his work, came to him during his travels in Persia, Egypt and India (1880 - 1882). During this period his watercolour style developed rapidly and some of his most sparkling watercolours are of Eastern life. He continued working on these after his return to Scotland in 1882 and throughout the 1880's.
From 1884 he worked closely with Guthrie, Walton and other 'Glasgow Boys' in Scotland and in London.
In 1899 Melville married and moved to Surrey. He did not stop travelling, working in Spain in 1899, Italy in 1902, until he contracted typhoid in Spain in 1904, dying shortly after his return to England.
A comprehensive memorial exhibition of Melville's works was held at the Royal Institute Galleries in London in 1906.
Coloured chalks on paper
Signed.
39 x 23 ins (99 x 58.4 cm)
SOLD
Provenance
Collection of Mrs Lake, 1965
Collection of Mr Andrew McIntosh Patrick
Collection of Giorgio Marsan and Umberta Nasi
Exhibited
First Exhibition of the Society of British Pastellists, The Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1890, no. 21
Let Glasgow Flourish, The Fine Art Society, Glasgow, 1979, no. 97
Spring Exhibition, The Fine Art Society, London, 1987, no.12
Arthur Melville Exhibition, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh & The Fine Art Society, London, October 1996, no. 35 (on loan)
The Glasgow Boys, 1885 - 1895, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh & The Fine Art Society, London, August - October 2004, no.3 (illustrated)
Following upon the international acclaim for the Glasgow Boys in the early part of 1890, Melville was to pass the rest of the summer chiefly preoccupied with the completion of the large pastel After the Play - a tour de force, which he showed in the autumn at The Grosvenor Gallery's inaugural exhibition of the British Pastellists.
After the Play is an exciting composition in the exercise of colour harmony. The bold expanse of the bright yellow dress of the woman being helped into her cape dominates the picture. Here Melville is dealing with a notion far in advance of his time - the reaction of colour planes against each other to express space within the picture.