The Joyless Winter Day

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Despite blizzard conditions, this picture was actually painted in the open air, albeit from the relative comfort of the artist's specially contructed mobile painting hut, which contained a stove. This enabled Farquharson to capture the remarkably realistic effects of a snow storm. The sheep, however, were false, fabricated in plaster by a local sculptor. Farquharson was famed for his Scottish snow scenes, and excepting 1914, sent a new one to the Royal Academy every year between 1894 and 1925. This was the first in the series. Farquharson combined a career as an artist with his inheritied responsibility as laird of the Finzean estate in Aberdeenshire, where many of his landscapes were painted.

Gallery label, September 2004

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