Letters and News at the Loch Side, by Henry Tanworth Wells (1828-1903). The date of this work is contested: it is given on Art UK as 1868; but the year of the marriage for which it is said to have been commissioned was 1883 (see Martin). Oil on canvas. H 120 x W 282 cm.(47.2 x 111 inches). Collection: West Highland Museum, accession no. 3457, bequeathed by the executors of Miss M. J. Becher, 1999; on loan to Arisaig House. Image kindly made available via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Here is another example of Wells's outdoor genre paintings showing a group of people in dramatic scenery, the kind of subject he clearly enjoyed painting when he was not engaged in portraiture. This large-scale work shows a group of men on a fishing trip in Scotland, at the water's edge, with mountains sloping down to the loch on the far shore. The boats have just returned in the fading light, to be met by a postman on horseback. The men have received their deliveries, but attention is divided, with some paying more heed to a large fish being displayed on one of the boats. Home and holiday are juxtaposed, and, for some, the pleasure and interest of the holiday, and the company of friends, seem to be the most alluring.
This was a favourite part of the country for Wells, and the group is one to which he himself belonged: it includes likenesses of "Wells’s friend and patron Francis Duckinfield Palmer Astley, who had an estate in Arisaig, and artist friend John Everett Millais, ... the second and third adult male figures from the left respectively" (Herrington et al. 284). This information complicates the date issue, since F.D.P. Astley died in 1868. Be that as it may, as well as reflecting on his clubbable character, the painting represents a part of Wells's output too often overshadowed by his portraiture. — Jacqueline Banerjee.
Bibliography
Herrington, Katie J.T., Louise Cooling and Alicia Hughes. "Henry Tanworth Wells: Miniaturist and Portriatist of Distinction." Victorian Artists and Their World, 1844-1861, as Reflected in the Papers of Joanna and George Boyce and Henry Wells. Edited by Herrington. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2024. 269-285. [Review of whole book]
Letters and News at the Loch Side. Art UK. Web. 14 September 2025.
Martin, Vanessa. Letters and News at the Loch Side. West Highland Museum. Web. 14 September 2025. https://www.westhighlandmuseum.org.uk/2024/12/05/letters-and-news-at-the-loch-side/
Created 14 September 2025