Arthur Melville

Arthur Melville ( born April 4, 1855 in Loanhead of Guthrie, Angus, Scotland; † August 28, 1904 in Witley, Surrey, England) was a Scottish painter. He is considered one of the best watercolor painters of his time.

Life

Arthur Melville was born in a village in the former county of Haddingtonshire in Scotland, but grew up in East Lothian. He began to paint at an early age and took art classes at night school before he entered the class of John Campbell Noble at the RSA School.

1878 Melville went to Paris, where he met Robert Weir Allan, who introduced him to the work of the Impressionists. During this time he joined the working in Grez -sur -Loing artist group that became known as the Glasgow Boys and the William York MacGregor (1855-1923), James Guthrie (1859-1930), Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913) and later, among others, George Henry (1858-1943) and John Lavery (1856-1941) belonged. A longer journey took him from 1880 to 1882 in Istanbul, Cairo, Baghdad, Karachi and returned to Scotland. 1886 and 1889 he again went on a trip to Paris, in 1890 he went to Spain and Algeria, 1894 to Venice before moving to London 's circle Graham Robertson joined. After his marriage in Surrey settled, led more trips into the volatile artist again to Spain (1899, 1904) and Italy ( 1802).

Arthur Melville died in 1904 shortly after returning from his last trip to Spain at the age of 49 years of typhus. His widow married fellow painter Theodore Roussel.

Exhibitions

• Appreciation of his work to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London
• 1906: Comprehensive retrospective at the Royal Institute Galleries, London

Work

Melville was formed more by the practice and their own observations as by the art classes. In the period in which he worked in Grez -sur -Loing with the Glasgow Boys, was his work under the influence of Jules Bastien- Lepage. There he also began to experiment with watercolors. In later works, the influence of Frank Brangwyn is felt, which together with Melville went traveling in 1892.

Main feature of his created watercolors on wet paper and painted only in his last six years of life in oil works is the incomparable color intensity with which he recorded his impressions of his travels to distant lands.

Selections

Numerous works Villes times are in private collections.