4257 - Robert Weir Allan, attributed, Ruins of Tintern Abbey

Robert Weir Allan, attributed, Ruins of Tintern Abbey A late-summer view from the River Wye, across meadows where farmers are at work, towards the ivy-covered ruins of the medieval Cistercianmonastery, Tintern Abbey, in Wales, UK; the abbey was the first Cistercian monastery in Wales and the second oldest in Great Britain, and was one of the wealthiest monasteries in the country; following the establishment of the Anglican Church as the state church after 1531 under Henry VIII, the abbey was forced to close in 1536 and its assets were handed over to the British Crown; the buildings were left to fall into disrepair and only regained significance with the emergence of Romanticism in the 18th century. In 1782, the vicar William Gilpin wrote his popular travel guide *Observations on the River Wye*, which brought the abbey back into the public consciousness; artists such as Thomas Gainsborough and William Turner immortalised the romantic ruins in their paintings; and the poet and leading figure of English Romanticism, William Wordsworth, visited the abbey in 1793 and published his famous poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. 13 July, 1798’, a striking, lightly impasto painting, oil on canvas, c. 1870, signed ‘Allan’ lower left, signs of age, framed in a modern gilded moulding, inner dimensions approx. 40.5 x 61 cm. Artist’s details: also known as Bob Allan, Scottish draughtsman, watercolourist, painter and graphic artist (1852, Glasgow - 1942, London); initially trained as a lithographer by his father, David Allan; turned to painting as a self-taught artist at an early age; submitted oil paintings to the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts as early as 1873; spent 1875-80 in Paris on a study trip funded by his father’s inheritance; whilst there, he was a studio pupil of Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian and a student of Alexandre Cabanel at the École des Beaux-Arts; subsequently undertook a study trip to Spain, finally returned to Scotland; from 1880 a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and its vice-president from 1908 to 1910, worked regularly in London from 1880 and full-time from 1883; a member of the New English Art Club from 1886, in 1910, Vice-President of the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists; undertook numerous study tours, including to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Greece, North Africa, Damascus, India in 1891-92 and Japan in 1907; visited his parents-in-law in the USA in 1915 and 1920; submitted works to various exhibitions, including the Paris Salon of the Société des Artistes Français, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Royal Academy in London, the Grosvenor Gallery in London, the New English Art Club, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Fine Art Society in London, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Paris World’s Fairs of 1889 and 1900; worked in London; source: Thieme-Becker, Vollmer, AKL, Saur ‘Bio-Bibliographical Artists’ Encyclopaedia’, Bénézit and the internet.