‘Lost’ masterpiece of bull goes on sale
A ‘LOST’ masterpiece of a champion Highland bull from Ardtornish Estate, compared to Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen, is expected to fetch £185,000 at auction this month.
The whereabouts of The Lord of the Isles, an epic 76-inch by 50-inch painting by Surrey-born Margaret Collyer, done in 1901, was a mystery until recently.
The self-taught artist, a nurse who bred livestock in Kenya and survived attacks from two lions and a python, was commissioned by the estate’s owners to paint his stock, and focused on a formidable bull, ‘entirely black, with a magnificent spread of horns’.
The subject Victor VII of Ardtornish, born in 1891, had won first prize as a yearling at the Royal Highland Show in Inverness in 1892, and then first as a two-year-old and champion the following year in Edinburgh, shown by Mr T V Smith.
His sire was An-t-Iasgair (born 1882), number 13 in the first herd book, bred by the Earl of Dunmore, and his dam was the outstanding black cow, Proiseag Dhubh (born 1877), herd book number 783, who won first prize cow at the Royal Highland Show in 1882, 1885 and 1889.
With the help of six to seven men, Victor VII was taken up every morning to high ground, where he stood on a rock silhouetted against the sky while Collyer captured him in paint. She was pleasantly surprised the bull never charged at her, and managed to keep him pliant by feeding him handfuls of salt throughout each day.
The auctioneer, Tom Rooth Fine Art, described the painting: ‘Close to the sun, in lonely lands, Collyer’s Highland bull stands astride a rock, his coat blustering in the wind, a stream of spittle emanating from his mouth.
‘He is a vision of strength, dominance, vitality and masculinity; an untameable spirit, unchallengeable, unconquerable, and ruler of all he surveys.
‘If Sir Edwin Landseer created The Monarch of the Glen, then surely this should be the Emperor.’
Landseer’s magnificent depiction of a Highland stag, possibly painted near Glenorchy, was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland for £4 million in March. The Lord of the Isles goes on sale this week at the London’s Winter Art and Antiques Fair in Olympia in London.