A drove of Highland cattle makes its way along a rural track bordered by Scots firs. Beyond, light falls on Balmoral Castle in the scenic Dee Valley, Aberdeenshire, today part of Cairngorms National Park.
Queen Victoria first visited the Dee Valley in 1848. Falling in love with its dramatic, natural beauty, she and her husband, Prince Albert, first leased and then bought a castle there in 1852. Finding it too small for their needs, they commissioned architect William Smith of Aberdeen to build the current Balmoral Castle in the Scots baronial style. This new castle with its 'pepper-pot' turrets was finished in 1856 and the old was demolished. Victoria and Albert embraced Scottish life, furnishing the new castle with tartan carpets and curtains, requiring their staff to wear kilts, keeping a herd of Highland cattle on their estate, fishing and deer stalking and attending the local Highland Games at Braemar. Victoria even wore a set of jewellery made from the teeth of stags shot by her husband. Victoria commissioned many artists to paint their Balmoral estate, most notably Edwin Landseer (1802-1873). Following Albert's death, Victoria spent increasing amounts of time at Balmoral and local ghillie John Brown became one of her closest companions. This royal enthusiasm for Scotland helped fuel a revival of interest in Highland culture. Artists like Joseph Denovan Adam produced romantic images of wild mountains, purple heather and misty glens populated by Highland cattle and deer. However, this vision of Scotland was in large part a myth that had been popularised decades earlier by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. It ignored the realities of Scottish life, the Highland Clearances having made thousands of crofters destitute in favour of lucrative sheep farming and hunting lodges, like Balmoral, for leisured aristocrats.
Glasgow landscape and animal painter Joseph Denovan Adam (1842-1896), studied under his father, the landscape painter Joseph Adam (fl.1858-1880) at the South Kensington Schools in London. From the early 1870s he lived in Perthshire, near Crieff. After a period in Edinburgh, he settled near Stirling in 1887 and founded a school of animal painting at Craigmill. He is particularly known for his large seasonal Scottish landscapes in which Highland cattle feature prominently, painted in a vigorous and direct manner. Balmoral - Autumn is typical. His works were popular not only in Britain but in Europe, where this kind of Scottish national idyll was hugely successful, and he won gold medals in Munich and Paris. The year before this painting was made, one of his paintings was purchased by the French government.
Credit: Purchased from the Trustees of the artist's estate, 1896