Lot 305: Robert Scott Lauder, R.S.A. (1803-1869)

Maitre Pierre, Countess of Croye and Quentin Durward in the Inn signed and dated 'R.S. Lauder RSA/1850' (lower right) oil on canvas 42 x 541/4 in. (106.7 x 137.8 cm.) PROVENANCE with The Fine Art Society, London, from whom acquired by the present owner in 1977. LITERATURE C. Neilson, 'Travels with Malcolm', Cycle, January 1979, p.102. E. Dickson, 'The Collectors: Old Battersea House, Malcolm and Christopher Forbes in London', Architectural Digest, April 1979, p. 114, illustrated in colour. The Lamp of Memory, Scott and the Artist, Buxton, August 1979, p. 68, illustrated in colour. EXHIBITION Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1851, no. 193. Buxton, Derbyshire, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Sir Walter Scott and the Visual Arts, 1979, no.34. 32 Victorian Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection at the Fine Art Society, 1981. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Master Class: Robert Scott Lauder and his pupils, 1983, no. 28. NOTES Robert Scott Lauder, who was born in Scotland and was a pupil of Sir William Allan, R.A., P.R.S.A (1782-1850), began as a portrait painter but became increasingly interested in historical genre and subjects drawn from literature. He was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1829, which had been established three years previously, and moved to Rome with his wife, the daughter of his fellow artist, John Thomson, in 1833. He returned from Italy in 1838 and settled in London where he exhibited his work both at the British Institution and the Royal Academy. He moved back to Scotland in 1852 having been appointed Master of the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh and was an extremely popular and effective teacher guiding many of the Academy's best pupils, such as William Quiller Orchardson, R.A. (1832-1910) and John Pettie, R.A. (1839-1893) whose work was to define the Scottish School of painting. He himself was the most outstanding Scottish history painter of his generation. The novels of Sir Walter Scott inspired some of Lauder's best work. The present picture is taken from an incident in Scott's Quentin Durward (chapter 4), a tale of political skulduggery and chivalric deeds set in fifteenth-century France, which had an immense success not least in Europe, on its publication in 1823. Durward, a member of King Louis XI of France's bodyguard, both protects and courts Isabelle de Croye, a beautiful heiress. In this scene King Louis XI of France, disguised as Maitre Pierre, intimidates Isabella, Countess of Croye, and Scott's young hero Quentin Durward in his instinctive chivalric defence of her unwittingly offends the King, leading the King to concoct a stratagem which, if successful (which it is not in the end), is intended to embroil both Durward and the Countess of Croye, ruining her and leading to the hero Quentin Durward's death: 'The door opened, and a girl, rather above than under fifteen years old, entered with a platter, covered with damask, on which was placed a small saucer of the dried plums which have always added to the reputation of Tours, and a cup of the curiously chased plate which the goldsmiths of that city were anciently famed for executing... ''How now, Jacqueline!'' said Maitre Pierre, when she entered the apartment - ''Did I not desire that Dame Perette should bring what I wanted?''... Jacqueline turned pale, and even tottered at the answer of Maitre Pierre; for it must be owned, that his voice and looks, at all times harsh, caustic, and unpleasing, had, when he expressed anger or suspicion, an effect both sinister and alarming. The mountain chivalry of Quentin Durward was instantly awakened, and he hastened to approach Jacqueline, and relieve her of the burden she bore, and which she passively resigned to him, while, with a timid and anxious look, she watched the countenance of the angry burgess.' The subject had previously been illustrated by J. W. Wright in his illustration in the Magnum Opus edition of Scott's novels, which had been published by Robert Cadell in 1831 which Lauder seems to have turned to relatively frequently as a source. Lauder appears to have been influenced in his composition by Millais' Lorenzo and Isabella, the first pre-Raphaelite picture which Millais exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, which is of a parallel theme of a villain brooding over the murder of one of a pair of youthful lovers who, innocent of approaching disaster, are totally occupied with each other.