Sound of Kerrera

Location

Country: Finland
City: Helsinki
Place: British Embassy

This delicately-coloured, detailed watercolour shows a picturesque view in Scotland. The Sound of Kerrera is a narrow stretch of water of 200 or so metres, between the Scottish mainland and the island of Kerrera, in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, close to the town of Oban.

Views of the Sound of Kerrera were also sketched in pencil by J. M. W. Turner and are preserved in two of Turner’s sketchbooks now in the Tate collection, London.

Drawing master, miniature painter and landscape watercolourist Edwin Aaron Penley was the nephew of the artist Aaron Edwin Penley (1807-1870), whose manner he closely imitated. In 1861 he was unsuccessful candidate for the New Water-colour Society. He was commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint six views of the interior of the royal yacht ‘Victoria and Albert II’ in 1864, as a memento of her voyages aboard the yacht with Prince Albert. Penley is thought to have come from the Marylebone area of London. He practiced from 1853 to 1890 and lived in London, Cheltenham and Bognor. He showed eleven works at the Royal Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street between 1853 and 1872 and also exhibited his work at other exhibition venues.

Places

Scotland, Argyll and Bute, Sound of Kerrera

Subjects

topography, landscape C19th, mountain, stone/rock, sea, sound, stone wall

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), watercolour (as artists materials), watercolour (as object name)

Artist

Edwin Aaron Penley (1826 - 1893)

Title

Sound of Kerrera

Date

1890

Medium

Watercolour on paper

Dimensions

height: 18.00 cm, width: 47.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Christie's, 14 December 1976

Inscription

Insbl,Sdbr

Provenance

Sold through Christie's, London, on 14 December 1976 (Lot 79); from which sale purchased by the Department of the Environment

GAC number

12669A