How artist William Daniell helped bring the rugged splendour of Scotland's coast to light
When artist William Daniell chronicled the rugged splendour of Scotland’s coastline in the early 1800s, he reshaped popular perceptions forever,
William Daniell may just be the most important artist you’ve never heard of. A seasoned explorer and prolific painter and printmaker born in 1769, his works shaped not only our predecessors’ perception of nineteenth century Scotland, but ours too. In an age preceding photography, Daniell was the first artist to chronicle Scotland’s dramatic and untamed seascapes with a series of 308 lithographs of the coast which effectively created the Scottish tourist industry in the early 1800s.
‘When the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars broke out and continued to rage on, the continent was to all intents and purposes closed to British travellers,’ explains Dr Iain Gordon Brown, former principal curator of manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland. ‘People were very much thrown back onto the British Isles and as such they discovered the beauty of these islands in a way they hadn’t before. Scotland, being rather more remote than the rest of Britain, had a bit more glamour attached to it. So Daniell is representative of a very elaborate form of Scottish topographical tourism.’
For fashionable Georgian-era travellers, Daniell’s images popularised the notion of visiting the Scottish coast in much the same way that Edinburgh artist David Roberts’ stylised depictions of the Middle East in the 1830s drew huge numbers of well-heeled British tourists to that region. Not that Daniell was a completely original thinker. In fact his template came from his uncle Thomas, a respected landscapist and attendee of the Royal Academy with whom Daniell went to live aged just ten, when his bricklaying publican father died prematurely in 1779 (his younger brother Samuel was sent to live with another relative and also become a celebrated artist).
His father’s demise was Daniell’s salvation. Aged 16 his artist
For fashionable Georgian-era travellers, Daniell popularised the notion of visiting Scotland’s coast
uncle Thomas took him to India to act as his assistant, and over eight years they laboured before returning to London and publishing a 144-aquatint book called Oriental Scenery in six parts between 1795-1808. Not only was Thomas Daniell’s epic creation a critical success which still informs visions of romantic India, but it was a runaway commercial triumph. Retailing at £210 (equivalent to almost £17,000 today) The East India Company bought 30 copies and 18 more were sold to individuals.
Now a man of means, over the next five years Daniell travelled throughout England, Wales and Scotland until, in 1813, he decided to undertake his magnum opus, A Voyage Around Great Britain. He originally wanted to make the trip by sea but it soon became clear that was impractical, so instead he made it by road in six separate trips between 1813 and 1823. Embarking on epic and often perilous voyages around Great Britain’s coastline with little more than a notepad, he compiled an impressive array of sketches, paintings and accompanying commentaries, documenting some 7,500 miles of British coastline. Along his way, he described in minute detail the customs, beliefs and social conditions of those he found.
Daniell wanted to replicate the successful partnership between himself and his uncle in India, so invited Richard Ayton, a 27-year-old playwright and freelance author, to join him and write the accompanying text to his artwork. Starting in Land’s End, they initially seemed to make a perfect pairing, but it was not to last and by the time they reached Holyhead on Anglesey they went their separate ways.
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Now a man of means, Daniell undertook his magnum opus
‘They ended up parting company because William was much keener on the picturesque, romantic side of the coast, whereas Ayton was writing about the terrible social conditions of the people they found,’ explained Charles Newington, an artist who once played the role of Daniell for the TV programme Coast.
After visiting Edinburgh where he stayed with Walter Scott, who had whiled away the summer of 1814 sailing along the west coast of Scotland, Daniell heeded Scott’s advice and pressed on, travelling from Wigtown to the Hebrides in 1815. Scott had pointed out the main places to visit, given Daniell a note of introduction that allowed him to beg hospitality from Scott’s many noble acquaintances, and even wrote the words to accompany many of Daniell’s images.
It is little surprise that the volume of prints published in 1821 is dedicated to Walter Scott, the inscription reading: ‘The many acts of kindness and hospitality which cheered my voyage along the western coast and isles of Scotland almost converted it into an excursion of pleasure. I am glad to acknowledge, Sir, that the introductions you had the politeness to give me were very efficacious in procuring for me these advantages; and that I derived great benefit from the remarks you made to me in conversation respecting a region which you had recently explored with a poet’s eye, which your genius has rescued from obscurity.’
It was in the Hebrides that Daniell ventured into Fingal’s Cave, a distinctive rock formation first brought to public attention by naturalist Sir Joseph Banks in 1772, which quickly became the go-to destination for romantics. Daniell explored Eigg, Rum, Raasay, Skye, Harris and Lewis, sketching and making notes of his findings (admittedly with far less profundity than Ayton had done). With the sun beating down
during an unusually balmy Scottish summer, he continued around the north coast, visiting the Orkney Isles before reaching Dundee in October 1815, a leg of his trip which yielded 139 aquatints of Scottish scenes. His final journey in Scotland started in August 1821 when he left St Andrews, his odyssey ending at Land’s End in September 1823.
If Daniell’s mix of imagery and social commentary was revolutionary, so was the medium he used. He spearheaded an artistic revolution by harnessing aquatint, a delicate form of etching which created moody, ephemeral colour prints which Daniell first came across in India and which he spent 18 hours a day for seven years perfecting on his return from the subcontinent. Using aquatints was financially sensible because it allowed many prints to be created, but it also gave the prints a dreamy quality and brought his work within the price range of a huge range of consumers, creating a misty-eyed everyman vision of coastal Scotland that has never completely faded.
Each time Daniell returned to London from his coastal voyages he would engrave mellow, romantic images of his findings, becoming so proficient that he often produced one aquatint a day. Daniell ultimately combined all of his coastal aquatints to produce a colossal eight-series travelogue called
A Voyage Round Great Britain, earning him a sought-after place as a full member of the Royal Academy of Art in 1822 (he was voted in ahead of John Constable).
The eight volumes, published in 1825 and costing £60 (£6,250 today), set a hefty benchmark for artists to follow, notably for JMW Turner, who was inspired by Daniell’s series to create the legendary landscapes and seascapes of Liber Studiorium.
Daniell was not finished with Scotland though, and several oil paintings of Scottish landscapes were to feature in the 168 pieces he exhibited at the Royal Academy before his death in 1837.
Overcoming the limited transport and communication to travel around Scotland’s coast, especially in the midst of the 1816 famine in Scotland, was an undertaking which required immense courage. It was, however, worth it. ‘In my view, the Scottish aquatints he did are by far the best and the most inspired of the whole coastal series,’ said Charles Newington.
Ultimately, Scotland’s unruly coastlines may have made Daniell, but his rendering of that rugged beauty also helped shape our image of remote Caledonia forever.