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This dramatic watercolor is presumably one of the six views of Loch Coruisk that Robson exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours between 1826 and 1832. The watercolor shown in 1826, probably the one in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is similar in composition to the version here, was accompanied by a poetic tag from Sir Walter Scott’s “Lord of the Isles”: “Stranger! If e’er thine ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness
Hath placed
By lake and cataract her lonely throne . . .”
(canto 4, lines 1.-.4)
Although critical of Robson’s drawing, color, finish, and compositional sense, John Ruskin, in “Modern Painters I”, commended the sensitivity of the artist’s depiction of mountains in a passage that almost seems to been written with this watercolor of Loch Coruisk in mind:
“They are serious and quiet in the highest degree, certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have never been excelled, and certain facts of mountain scenery never but by them expressed; as for instance, the stillness and depth of the mountain tarns, with the reversed imagery of their darkness signed across by the soft lines of faintly touching winds; the solemn flush of the brown fern and glowing heath under evening light; the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against clear still twilight” (Ruskin, “Works”, vol. 3, p. 193).


Scott Wilcox

Baskett, John, Jules David Prown, Duncan Robinson, Brian Allen, and William Reese. Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art. New Haven : Yale Center for British Art , 2007, cat. no. 104