"Morning Sun, possibly in Windsor Forest" by Andrew MacCallum (1821 - 1902)

Oil on canvas: 32 1/4 x 40 in.
Indistinctly signed and dated lower right: "A MacCallum / 1866"
Housed in a simple gilt frame.
 
 
MacCallum was born in Nottingham but was of Scottish heritage. After an aborted attempt at joining the family trade of hosiery, he enlisted at the Government School of Art in Nottingham at 22, eventually progressing his studies at the same school's branch at Somerset House in London. In 1850 he exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy, where he would continue to submit works annually until 1886.
 
The present work was likely exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1866, which included thirty-five oils and several watercolours. Though impossible to glean its given title, it is likely to represent a view in Windsor Forest, where the artist had painted in 1863. The following description by James Dafforne, a contemporary art critic, applied to another picture from the Dudley Gallery exhibition, well applies to the present: "An ancient and now broken bole, painted with such precision as to give not only every crevice of the gnarled trunk, but, by patient and honest painting, the complete reticulation of the extremities of the branches."
 
The critic continues: "Though Mr. MacCallum is, essentially, a tree painter, and revels in the glories of the wood and the forest...'Nobody', as one of his critics has said, 'ever drew the strength of a birch with more understanding of the nature of the tree; and the giants of the forest were never celebrated by a hand more faithful and laborious.'"
- James Dafforne, The Art Journal, Vol. 16, London 1877, p. 324.
 
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