Lot 73: Charles Lees, R.S.A. (1800-1880)

Winter Day - A slide scene, Duddingstone Loch
signed and dated 'C.Lees.RSA 1859' (lower right) and indistinctly inscribed 'Exhibited Royal Scottish Academy' (on a label attached to the reverse)
oil on canvas
30 1/8 x 50 1/8 in. (76.5 x 127.3 cm.)

Probably Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1859, no. 248.

Property from the Private Collection of Russell George

James L. Caw wrote of Charles Lees: '[He] found his true function in depicting...the field sports he loved and understood, and, in his later years, in landscape. Some of the former, such as the Hockey players on Linlithgow Loch, are full of character and action, whereas many of the latter reveal delicate feeling for Nature expressed with refinement if not power'. (J.L.Caw, Scottish Painting Past & Present, 1620-1908, Bath, 1908, p. 120).

Lees was born in Cupar, Fifeshire, and studied under Sir Henry Raeburn. After a brief period working in Rome, he returned to Edinburgh where he established himself as a painter of portraits, history and landscape genre as well as sporting subjects.

It is these sporting subjects that we now associate with Lees, in part due to their unique charm - busy compositions that manage to appear both elegant and uncontrived; in part due to the prominence of The Golfers (1847), which was acquired by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2002 in a sale negotiated by Christie's with financial assistance from the Art and Heritage Lottery Funds. Taking place on the 15 t h green of the Old Course at St Andrews during a foursome match, it portrays 52 identifiable onlookers in addition to the competing parties: Sir David Baird, Sir Ralph Anstruther against Major Playfair and John Campbell of Glensaddel.

Lees' skating subjects, 'slide scenes', form a distinct group within his sporting oeuvre. The earliest recorded is Skaters, a scene on Duddingstone Loch, shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1854 (no. 81). In 1857 he exhibited Skaters: Duddingstone Loch by moonlight (no. 111), now in the Fleming-Wyfold Collection, followed by Winter afternoon - curlers and skaters on Linlithgow Loch (no. 424) in 1858, the title again giving specific reference to location and time of day.
The present picture, dated 1859, can be tentatively identified as Winter day - a slide scene, Duddingstone Loch, exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy that year. However the title of Lees' 1860 exhibit: A winter holiday: scene on the ice, also fits well with this composition: there is an undeniable air of festivity, with the girl to the right proffering sustaining morsels, and the man on the left his hamper of wine. The interlinking figures, some graceful, some negotiating an imminent tumble, some already down, create a wonderfully animate and joyous composition.

Duddingstone Loch, in Duddingstone village on the outskirts of Edinburgh, was immortalised by Raeburn in his idiosyncratic portrait Revd Dr Robert Walker skating on Duddingstone Loch (circa 1795; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh).

We are grateful to Helen Smailes of the National Gallery of Scotland for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.