Public Sale of a Charming Collection of Pictures by, and the Property of, J. J. Bannatyne, R.S.W., at Walter J. Buchanan, 72 Renfield Street, Glasgow, April 1898

A short notice on page  six of The Glasgow Herald, on Monday the 4th of April, 1898, informed readers about an auction of pictures, on Tuesday the 5th, at Walter J. Buchanan’s Renfield Street gallery. The artist was John James Bannatyne (1836-1911). An advertisement for the sale is on page thirteen of the same edition of the paper.

 

The notice reads:

 

“Mr. Walter J. Buchanan will to-morrow sell, by auction, in his Renfield Street gallery, a collection of pictures by J. J. Bannatyne, a local artist who paints landscapes and seascapes. There are 88 works in all, including a few water-colour drawings. Mr Bannatyne, however, is more than anything else a painter in oils, who finds his subjects in Scotland, its lochs and seas and commons. His sympathies lie in the direction of nature under sunshine. His method is frank and direct, careful and finished. The walls of the gallery are covered by canvases in which refined realism is generally aimed at and secured. There is, moreover, considerable diversity of subject. The artist is clearly in love with the sea and the everlasting hills, but there are also stretches of common, in golden bloom, and red-roofed, sunlit villages which gladden the eye. Effects of sunlight and shadow, of trailing mist, of still water and wind-impelled sea, are obtained with artistic grace, and in sky and distance and atmosphere the pictures are equally accomplished. The collection remains on view to-day.”

 

The pictures listing in the advertisement include: Crossing the Common; The Mussel-Gatherer; The Head of Glenfalloch; Islay from the Kintyre Coast; Iona; After a Storm; and Loch Ranza.