People of Angus
David Waterson, Brechin, 1870-1954
Exhibitions
David Waterson was born in Brechin in 1870 and died 12 April 1954 after a lifetime of painting, etching and engraving landscapes and portraits. He trained at the Edinburgh College of Art, and when he returned from there to Brechin at the age of 20 supported himself with his art. He was made a burgess of the city in 1932 and granted the freedom of the city several weeks before he died in 1954. At some point he also married and, as the obituary notice said, "[a] very perfect marriage made the afternoon of his life serenely happy."
He exhibited in Dresden in 1906, Brechin in 1911, at the Montrose Museum in 1910 and 1929, and the Walker Art Galleries in Liverpool, and Royal Scottish Academy, as well as the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers where he became an associate in 1901 and full member in 1910. In 1907 and 1912 he was in Paris, and sold prints as well as had business opportunities presented to him by several dealers. He rejected the offers, and stayed in Brechin, where his prints were sold from a folio behind the counter in Black and Johnston's stationers shop; £1 for an unsigned etching, £1 7s 6d signed.
His work was well-known in his time and he found a ready market for his work. On one trip to Paris he was so engaged in his sketches and watercolours that he forgot to submit the prints he had brought with him until his last day there. He went along to an art dealer, who was familiar with his name, and who bought the lot. Waterson was also known to the British market, with Sir Seymour Haden, the president of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers considering his work to be 'genius'. The King of Sweden was also an admirer and patron of his work. Not bad for someone who, like James McBey the Aberdeen etcher, taught himself printmaking.
Local Hero
Waterson disliked naming a price for his work, but rather let the buyers name the price. In this respect he was similar to his contemporary, William Lamb of Montrose, another artist, who stayed in his local community instead of heading off to London or Edinburgh. However, Waterson seems to have done better financially than Lamb. Waterson, who said people should pay him what they felt it was worth, received sizeable commissions for his work. Despite there being no major exhibitions of his work in his lifetime, he still made a living from his printmaking, commissioned portraits, and later from commissioned illuminated texts. He also wrote 'Nature Notes' for the Scotsman and completed a large collection illustrating local fauna and flora. During all this time he also found time for photography, and to make his own varnishes, inks, pigments and painting grounds.
Artistic Influences
Waterson's work falls into several phases. Although he employed a limited range of subjects, and these did not change much during his 60 year career, his own style changed. From the turn of the century until about 1913/4 he rendered mood rather than fact in his watercolours and mezzotints, whereby he used a very wet watercolour technique that let the tonally linked sombre colours flow and merge into one another.
However, his oils at this time were another matter, they referred more to post-impressionist work, which he must have seen in Paris, as they provide a strong sense of place and time, and use complementary colours as was typical of French landscape painting at that time. His watercolours of the 1920’s differed in that they deal mainly with the effects of light on water, mainly with studies of the river, and was treated in all the media. Now he used painstaking detail in the foreground, but the distance become fluid and moody, to highlight the shift of focus, to provide depth. The 1930’s saw highly finished watercolours, and in the 1940’s he moved to a broken, more highly keyed colour scheme, using an almost pointillist technique, reminiscent of a small watercolour from his first visit to France in 1907.
Waterson's photographs show an obvious link with his printmaking and painting. In some studies of the river, parallel subjects and views can be found. However, it should not be assumed that the paintings were based on the photographs. Rather, the photographs were merely part of his on-going analysis of the subjects.
© Copyright Bruce Scharlau, 1998
Further Reading
David Waterson 1870-1954
Morrison, John
Perth and Kinross District Council, 1991
MS 510 Papers of David Waterson, Brechin, 1870-1954
Angus Archives
A large collection of sketchbooks, paintings and etchings are held by Angus Council Cultural Services. Please check with Montrose Museum for details of displays.
© Angus Council 1998 - 2008