Pair of 19C J Saile Scottish Highland Watercolors

Published by Nevan O Shaughnessy on November 30, 2023November 30, 2023

PRESENTING a LOVELY Pair of 19C J Saile Scottish Highland Watercolors.

Both watercolors feature a Scottish Highland scene with mountain in the background, mist, rock outcrops, heather, lochs or drinking pools etc.

They beautifully capture the colors of the Scottish Highlands with the yellow/gold gorse and purple heather with misty mountain in the background.

There appears to be the silhouette, of a castle on the mountain top.

From circa 1880 by the artist “J. Saile”.

Both signed, one on the bottom right the other bottom left.

We cannot find any record for the artist, but in our opinion these watercolors are quite accomplished and we believe that ‘Saile’ is a Scottish surname.

Framed and under glass, in their original ebony veneered wooden frames with gold interior rim/border.

They are in very good original condition, with no evidence of losses to the paintings or foxing or fading. The colors are still very vibrant despite their age.

A few cracks to the ebony veneer on the frames through age but nothing significant.

The Highlands (Scots: the Hielands; Scottish Gaelic: a’ Ghàidhealtachd [ə ˈɣɛːəl̪ˠt̪ʰəxk], ‘the place of the Gaels‘) is a historic region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A’ Ghàidhealtachd literally means “the place of the Gaels” and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands. The Scottish Highlands are renowned for their natural beauty and are a popular subject in art.

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km² (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland’s as a whole, comparable with that of Bolivia, Chad and Russia.

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

The Scottish highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands