View of Elgin

Artist Robert Brough (Invergordon, Scotland, 1872 - 1905)

Datec. 1894

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings

DimensionsSight Size: Height: 54.3 cm, Width: 74.7 cm
Frame: Height: 65 cm, Width: 85.2 cm, Depth: 4 cm

AcquisitionThe Hyslop Collection Bequest, 1993.

CopyrightOut of copyright - CC0

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG010736

Keywords

About MeThe artist Robert Brough's friend W. Dallas Ross came from Elgin, where his father was a train driver. This painting, which is full of vitality and energy, depicts a train travelling on the branch line to Lossiemouth.

In subject and treatment it recalls Turner's famous 'Wind, Steam and Speed' of 1844 whilst the bank of poppies is reminiscent of Monet's famous landscape of the same subject, painted at Argenteuil in 1873. Brough had studied in Paris in the 1890s and would have been familiar with Monet's work. The distinctive free brushwork, however, was Brough's own hallmark and characterised all of his paintings.

Tragically Brough was to die only a few years later, the victim of severe burns sustained in a railway crash near Sheffield in 1905.