A rare 126-year-old painting by a Scots artist who tragically died in a train crash at 32 is expected to fetch as much as £150,000 at auction.
The painting titled Sweet Violets is regarded as Robert Brough's 'masterpiece' and will go under the hammer on Thursday, June 8, at Lyon & Turnbull.
Talented Brough had a great career trajectory and it was said he would have been regarded as one of the greatest in the history of Scottish art if he did not meet his untimely death in 1905.
Brough, raised on a farm near Aberdeen, was travelling to London in 1905 when his train was involved in a crash. He died after suffering severe burns, Aberdeen Live reports.
He created Sweet Violets in 1897 while still in his mid-twenties after spotting Barbara Staples, then 18, on the city's Union Street and asking her father permission to paint her.
In the painting, she is holding a jar of violets and clad in the fashionable dress of the day. Scottish Field writes that the piece is widely considered to be regarded as his masterpiece, and has only been displayed once at Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1995.
Brough was brought up by a single mother who was a lady’s maid to the Duchess of Hamilton and his artist talent was spotted by neighbour and fellow artist George Reid, who later became president of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Brough went on from Ruthrieston School to study evening classes at Gray's School of Art while working as an apprentice engraver with Andrew Gibb & Co.
He met American artist, John Singer Sargent, early in the twentieth century at Chelsea Arts Club and the leader portrait painted of the era soon became his mentor.
Sargent rushed to his bedside after the train crash and was with his protégé when he died two days after the tragedy in a Sheffield hospital.
The three-train collision at Cudworth station in South Yorkshire killed seven people after Brough's train caught fire, and he was returned to the north-east and buried at St Machar's Cathedral.
Brough had established himself as a successful London-based artist before he died, painting sitters from notable families.
He was inspired by French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin after training in Paris where he shared Scottish Colourist, S.J, Peploe.
A second painting of Brough's, titled Breton Women Sitting on a Beach, will also feature in the auction.
Sweet Violets was originally owned by the Staples family before it was bought and cherished by famous surgeon, Sir Alexander Ogston.
Ogston hung the painting in Ardoe House for many years and even refused an offer from Barbara Staples’ husband Andrew Faris to purchase it.
The portrait was eventually sold back to the sitters’ family, who bought it in a private gallery in Munich in the 1960s. It was later sold again to a private collector who expressed interest after seeing it in an exhibition of Brough’s work at Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1995.
Nick Curnow, Lyon & Turnbull’s vice chairman, is in charge of the sale and he said: "Brough was young, ambitious, precociously talented and on an impressive career trajectory when he met with a premature death.
"It was his untimely ending that prevented him from being fully admitted into the canon of great painters in the history of Scottish art. His obituary recorded that he combined the dash of Sargent and the beautiful refinement of Velazquez.
"Given his short lifespan, Brough wasn’t as prolific as he could have been which means it’s rare to come across one of his paintings in a sale.
"Sweet Violets, which is a companion painting to Brough’s Fantaisie en Folie, now in the Tate collection, is a tour-de-force and an extremely important painting by this forgotten genius. Both implement a similar palette and portray their sitter in profile against a plain background.
"We anticipate that news of his work being auctioned will generate great interest with bidding from far and wide."
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