Thomas Millie Dow
Encyclopedia
Thomas Millie Dow was a Scottish
artist
, a member of the Glasgow Boys school. He was a member of The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour
and the New English Art Club
.
RSW 1885; GAC 1887; NEAC 1887; PS 1898; ROI 1898
Dow was born 28 October 1848 at Dysart
, Fife
. He was educated for the law and was expected to follow his father and brother into the family law firm in Kirkcaldy
. Deciding against a career in law, Dow went to Paris
in 1877 and enrolled for classes at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
under Jean-Léon Gérôme
. Later, in 1879 he registered with the ateliers of Rudolphe Julien and Carolus Duran. Of his earlier instruction in painting and drawing little is known except for the encouragement he received from his uncle Alexander Millie, an amateur artist.
Two young men among the many young British and American students registered for classes in Paris in the late 1870s became Dow’s particular friends. They were the Englishman William Stott
of Oldham
and the American Abbott Handerson Thayer
. Both men were to remain important figures in Dow’s personal and professional life and, as both had strong personalities and strong ideas about art, they came to exert a considerable influence over the artistic choices he made. Among other friends studying in Paris at the time were the Glasgow
-based artists John Lavery
, Alexander Roche, James Paterson and Alexander Mann
.
Dow painted in oils, watercolour and pastels. His subjects include flower studies, landscapes, portraits and decorative allegorical works. The geographical range of his landscapes extends through Scotland, north-eastern US, Morocco
, northern Italy
and Cornwall
. Using a subtly refined palette he chose to depict the quiet moods of nature. The subjects of his compositions range from the intense stillness of woodland to the calm before a storm at sea; and from dusk deepening on a northern shore to the lifting haze of a Mediterranean spring morning.
1877-79 Dow spent the winters in the Paris studios and making occasional sketching excursions with fellow students Mann, Paterson, and Bell, to the villages of Barbizon
and Grez-sur-Loing
in the Forest of Fontainebleau. The summers, he spent painting in the towns and villages along the east coast of Scotland, travelling from Dysart through St Andrews
and on up to Stonehaven
, Cullen, Cowie
, Collieston
and Forvie Ness.
Upon his return from Paris and based at home in Dysart records show Dow exhibiting at the Royal Scottish Academy
(RSA) in Edinburgh from 1878 and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art (RGIFA) from 1879. However his letters to the Thayer family from this period reveal the degree of anxiety he felt about he direction his career should take.
1883 On 6 September Dow sailed on the “Devonia” from Glasgow to New York. From there he travelled up the Hudson River
to the home of Abbott Thayer and his wife Kate Bloede at Cornwall-on-Hudson. (Thayer had built there a studio on land owned by the Stillman family.) Dow stayed in the US into the early summer of 1884. During these several months he produced what may be his best-known landscape, The Hudson River (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
, Glasgow). It is a view of the river taken from the Thayer’s house.
The US visit had re-invigorated Dow. His letters to Thayer between 1885-87 reveal his renewed enthusiasm for landscape. is these years that produce, among other fine paintings, Ragweed and Crows (Hunterian, University of Glasgow). He traveled out of the city, south to Moniaive
, for his first allegorical painting The Coming of Spring, and north for his study of birches, In a Wood at Forres
. The latter painting was bought by Alexander Mann. He had begun a series of commissions, the first being Portrait of John Nairn (Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery
) and writes of working on a likeness in pastels of his sister Mary Lady in Black (private collection). Dow was at this time sharing the Glasgow studio of W. Y. Macgregor and living with Mary and her husband Allan McLean, the lawyer, amateur painter and art collector.
1885-95 It is for the work completed between these years that Dow is most closely associated with that group of artists who later became affectionately known as the ‘Glasgow Boys’. Dow is among the 21 Glasgow-based artists whose work is assessed in David Martin’s contemporary account entitled ‘The Glasgow School of Painting’ (George Bell & Sons 1897). In his piece on Dow Martin wrote as follows. “His perception of colour is similar to his use of paint – keen and refined; and his observation of nature such as to give a true feeling of form, without a slavish imitation.” Clearly Dow’s subject matter and technique appealed to Martin. And he draws attention to what others have found since in Dow’s work, that is, his “faculty of placing on canvas the essence of the abstract qualities of his subject, with a fine decorative arrangement of line and colour masses, and, let the theme be an idyllic landscape or an imaginative figure-subject, he combines in a satisfactory result the ideal with the real”.
Though the Glasgow School grouping was ‘geographical in nature rather than stylistic’ as Paul Harris makes clear in his introduction to the 1976 edition of Martin’s account, it was to gain them a wider audience. Exhibitions at the Grosvenor Gallery
and the Grafton Gallery in London led to invitations from Secession galleries in Vienna, Munich, Berlin in the 1890s and, later, to exhibitions in U.S. cities. Dow also joined the New English Art Club
(NEAC) in 1887 and exhibited with them until 1891.
1888 He spent the summer travelling in Switzerland and Germany painting in the mountains, some of the time in the company of William Stott. Stott’s Portrait of Tom Dow is held in Edinburgh by the National Galleries of Scotland
. He spent the winter/spring 88/89 in Morocco. Among his Tangier paintings is the pastel A Spring Day, Morocco (Kirkcaldy AG).
1890s Dow married Florence Pilcher (née Cox) in 1891. Florence, a widow, had a boy and a girl from her first marriage. Dow’s own daughter Mary Rosamond was born in 1892. Two years later, in 1894, the family moved from Glasgow to St Ives, Cornwall
where Dow joined his friends and fellow painters Louis Grier and Lowell Dyer as members of the St Ives Art Club. Though living far from Glasgow, records show that Dow continued to exhibit there and in other cities in Scotland. Among his paintings shown at the RGIFA in 1892 were The Enchanted Wood (private collection) and, in 1894, The Herald of Winter 1894 (McManus Galleries
Dundee).
For several years from 1896 the Dows spent the winter months in Italy. His Italian paintings include several watercolours and pastels of Apennine valleys and villages and some well-known Venetian landmarks.
For his larger pieces he continued to paint allegorical subjects: The Kelpie 1895 (whereabouts unknown), A Vision of Spring 1901 (Manchester Art Gallery
), the triptych Eve 1904 (Walker Art Gallery
), and Sirens of the North 1911 (McManus Galleries
Dundee). Of the Cornish paintings his most frequent subject in both oils and pastels is the harbour at St Ives. This he depicts in contrasting moods, busy with boats in the sunshine and lying calm under a moonlit sky.
Dow died on 3 July 1919 at St Ives, Cornwall, England and is buried at Zennor
.
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, a member of the Glasgow Boys school. He was a member of The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour
The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour
The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours is a Scottish organisation of painters.It was founded in 1876, with the support of the Royal Scottish Academy, by artists to "promote, through exhibition, the medium of watercolour and encourage the bold, free and colourful qualities of...
and the New English Art Club
New English Art Club
The New English Art Club was founded in London in 1885 as an alternate venue to the Royal Academy.-History:Young English artists returning from studying art in Paris mounted the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in April 1886...
.
RSW 1885; GAC 1887; NEAC 1887; PS 1898; ROI 1898
Dow was born 28 October 1848 at Dysart
Dysart
Dysart is a former town and royal burgh located on the south-east coast between Kirkcaldy and West Wemyss in Fife. The town is now considered to be a suburb of Kirkcaldy. Dysart was once part of a wider estate owned by the St Clair or Sinclair family...
, Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
. He was educated for the law and was expected to follow his father and brother into the family law firm in Kirkcaldy
Kirkcaldy
Kirkcaldy is a town and former royal burgh in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. The town lies on a shallow bay on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth; SSE of Glenrothes, ENE of Dunfermline, WSW of Dundee and NNE of Edinburgh...
. Deciding against a career in law, Dow went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1877 and enrolled for classes at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts is the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France.The École des Beaux-arts is made up of a vast complex of buildings located at 14 rue Bonaparte, between the quai Malaquais and the rue Bonaparte, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Près,...
under Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.-Life:Jean-Léon Gérôme was born...
. Later, in 1879 he registered with the ateliers of Rudolphe Julien and Carolus Duran. Of his earlier instruction in painting and drawing little is known except for the encouragement he received from his uncle Alexander Millie, an amateur artist.
Two young men among the many young British and American students registered for classes in Paris in the late 1870s became Dow’s particular friends. They were the Englishman William Stott
William Stott (artist)
William Stott-of-Oldham as he signed his works in order to distinguish himself from Edward Stott, was a British painter born in Oldham, Lancashire, England. He was the son of an Oldham cotton mill owner...
of Oldham
Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amid the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers Irk and Medlock, south-southeast of Rochdale, and northeast of the city of Manchester...
and the American Abbott Handerson Thayer
Abbott Handerson Thayer
Abbott Handerson Thayer was an American artist, naturalist and teacher. As a painter of portraits, figures, animals and landscapes, he enjoyed a certain prominence during his lifetime, as indicated by the fact that his paintings are part of the most important U.S. art collections...
. Both men were to remain important figures in Dow’s personal and professional life and, as both had strong personalities and strong ideas about art, they came to exert a considerable influence over the artistic choices he made. Among other friends studying in Paris at the time were the Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
-based artists John Lavery
John Lavery
Sir John Lavery was an Irish painter best known for his portraits.Belfast-born John Lavery attended the Haldane Academy, in Glasgow, in the 1870s and the Académie Julian in Paris in the early 1880s. He returned to Glasgow and was associated with the Glasgow School...
, Alexander Roche, James Paterson and Alexander Mann
Alexander Mann
Alexander Mann was a Scottish landscape and genre painter. He was a member of New English Art Club and Royal Institute of Oil Painters.-Biography:Alexander Mann was born in Glasgow, Scotland on January 22, 1853...
.
Dow painted in oils, watercolour and pastels. His subjects include flower studies, landscapes, portraits and decorative allegorical works. The geographical range of his landscapes extends through Scotland, north-eastern US, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, northern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
. Using a subtly refined palette he chose to depict the quiet moods of nature. The subjects of his compositions range from the intense stillness of woodland to the calm before a storm at sea; and from dusk deepening on a northern shore to the lifting haze of a Mediterranean spring morning.
1877-79 Dow spent the winters in the Paris studios and making occasional sketching excursions with fellow students Mann, Paterson, and Bell, to the villages of Barbizon
Barbizon
Barbizon is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest.-Art history:The Barbizon school of painters is named after the village; Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, leaders of the school, made their homes and died in the...
and Grez-sur-Loing
Grez-sur-Loing
Grez-sur-Loing is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France.-People:It is located 70 km south of Paris and is notable for the artists and musicians who have lived or stayed there...
in the Forest of Fontainebleau. The summers, he spent painting in the towns and villages along the east coast of Scotland, travelling from Dysart through St Andrews
St Andrews
St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....
and on up to Stonehaven
Stonehaven
Stonehaven is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It lies on Scotland's northeast coast and had a population of 9,577 in 2001 census.Stonehaven, county town of Kincardineshire, grew around an Iron Age fishing village, now the "Auld Toon" , and expanded inland from the seaside...
, Cullen, Cowie
Cowie, Aberdeenshire
Cowie is an historic fishing village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This village has existed since the Middle Ages, but in current times it is effectively subsumed into the town of Stonehaven.-History:...
, Collieston
Collieston
Collieston is a small former fishing village on the North Sea coast in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The village lies just north of the Sands of Forvie Special Protection Area, between Cruden Bay and Newburgh.-History:...
and Forvie Ness.
Upon his return from Paris and based at home in Dysart records show Dow exhibiting at the Royal Scottish Academy
Royal Scottish Academy
The Royal Scottish Academy is a Scottish organisation that promotes contemporary Scottish art. Founded in 1826, as the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, the RSA maintains a unique position in Scotland as an independently funded institution led by eminent artists and...
(RSA) in Edinburgh from 1878 and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art (RGIFA) from 1879. However his letters to the Thayer family from this period reveal the degree of anxiety he felt about he direction his career should take.
1883 On 6 September Dow sailed on the “Devonia” from Glasgow to New York. From there he travelled up the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
to the home of Abbott Thayer and his wife Kate Bloede at Cornwall-on-Hudson. (Thayer had built there a studio on land owned by the Stillman family.) Dow stayed in the US into the early summer of 1884. During these several months he produced what may be his best-known landscape, The Hudson River (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is a museum and art gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. The building houses one of Europe's great civic art collections...
, Glasgow). It is a view of the river taken from the Thayer’s house.
The US visit had re-invigorated Dow. His letters to Thayer between 1885-87 reveal his renewed enthusiasm for landscape. is these years that produce, among other fine paintings, Ragweed and Crows (Hunterian, University of Glasgow). He traveled out of the city, south to Moniaive
Moniaive
Moniaive is a village in the south of Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway, near Thornhill, on the A702 road and B729 road. Population 520 . The name is from Gaelic monadh-abh and means "Hill of Streams". It is situated at the northern end of the very scenic and tranquil Cairn Valley...
, for his first allegorical painting The Coming of Spring, and north for his study of birches, In a Wood at Forres
Forres
Forres , is a town and former royal burgh situated in the north of Scotland on the Moray coast, approximately 30 miles east of Inverness. Forres has been a winner of the Scotland in Bloom award on several occasions...
. The latter painting was bought by Alexander Mann. He had begun a series of commissions, the first being Portrait of John Nairn (Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery
Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery
Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery is the main museum and exhibition space in Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland.The land for the town's museum and art gallery was donated by John Nairn on the former site of Balsusney House, the home of John Maxton...
) and writes of working on a likeness in pastels of his sister Mary Lady in Black (private collection). Dow was at this time sharing the Glasgow studio of W. Y. Macgregor and living with Mary and her husband Allan McLean, the lawyer, amateur painter and art collector.
1885-95 It is for the work completed between these years that Dow is most closely associated with that group of artists who later became affectionately known as the ‘Glasgow Boys’. Dow is among the 21 Glasgow-based artists whose work is assessed in David Martin’s contemporary account entitled ‘The Glasgow School of Painting’ (George Bell & Sons 1897). In his piece on Dow Martin wrote as follows. “His perception of colour is similar to his use of paint – keen and refined; and his observation of nature such as to give a true feeling of form, without a slavish imitation.” Clearly Dow’s subject matter and technique appealed to Martin. And he draws attention to what others have found since in Dow’s work, that is, his “faculty of placing on canvas the essence of the abstract qualities of his subject, with a fine decorative arrangement of line and colour masses, and, let the theme be an idyllic landscape or an imaginative figure-subject, he combines in a satisfactory result the ideal with the real”.
Though the Glasgow School grouping was ‘geographical in nature rather than stylistic’ as Paul Harris makes clear in his introduction to the 1976 edition of Martin’s account, it was to gain them a wider audience. Exhibitions at the Grosvenor Gallery
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé...
and the Grafton Gallery in London led to invitations from Secession galleries in Vienna, Munich, Berlin in the 1890s and, later, to exhibitions in U.S. cities. Dow also joined the New English Art Club
New English Art Club
The New English Art Club was founded in London in 1885 as an alternate venue to the Royal Academy.-History:Young English artists returning from studying art in Paris mounted the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in April 1886...
(NEAC) in 1887 and exhibited with them until 1891.
1888 He spent the summer travelling in Switzerland and Germany painting in the mountains, some of the time in the company of William Stott. Stott’s Portrait of Tom Dow is held in Edinburgh by the National Galleries of Scotland
National Galleries of Scotland
The National Galleries of Scotland are the five national galleries of Scotland and two partner galleries. It is one of the country's National Collections.-List of national galleries:* The National Gallery of Scotland* The Royal Scottish Academy Building...
. He spent the winter/spring 88/89 in Morocco. Among his Tangier paintings is the pastel A Spring Day, Morocco (Kirkcaldy AG).
1890s Dow married Florence Pilcher (née Cox) in 1891. Florence, a widow, had a boy and a girl from her first marriage. Dow’s own daughter Mary Rosamond was born in 1892. Two years later, in 1894, the family moved from Glasgow to St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...
where Dow joined his friends and fellow painters Louis Grier and Lowell Dyer as members of the St Ives Art Club. Though living far from Glasgow, records show that Dow continued to exhibit there and in other cities in Scotland. Among his paintings shown at the RGIFA in 1892 were The Enchanted Wood (private collection) and, in 1894, The Herald of Winter 1894 (McManus Galleries
McManus Galleries
McManus Galleries is a Gothic Revival-style building, located in the centre of Dundee, Scotland. The building houses a museum and art gallery with a collection of fine and decorative art as well as a natural history collection....
Dundee).
For several years from 1896 the Dows spent the winter months in Italy. His Italian paintings include several watercolours and pastels of Apennine valleys and villages and some well-known Venetian landmarks.
For his larger pieces he continued to paint allegorical subjects: The Kelpie 1895 (whereabouts unknown), A Vision of Spring 1901 (Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery is a publicly-owned art gallery in Manchester, England. It was formerly known as Manchester City Art Gallery.The gallery was opened in 1824 and today occupies three buildings, the oldest of which - designed by Sir Charles Barry - is Grade I listed and was originally home to...
), the triptych Eve 1904 (Walker Art Gallery
Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...
), and Sirens of the North 1911 (McManus Galleries
McManus Galleries
McManus Galleries is a Gothic Revival-style building, located in the centre of Dundee, Scotland. The building houses a museum and art gallery with a collection of fine and decorative art as well as a natural history collection....
Dundee). Of the Cornish paintings his most frequent subject in both oils and pastels is the harbour at St Ives. This he depicts in contrasting moods, busy with boats in the sunshine and lying calm under a moonlit sky.
Dow died on 3 July 1919 at St Ives, Cornwall, England and is buried at Zennor
Zennor
Zennor is a village and civil parish in Cornwall in England. The parish includes the villages of Zennor, Boswednack and Porthmeor and the hamlet of Treen. It is located on the north coast, about north of Penzance. Alphabetically, the parish is the last in Britain—its name comes from the Cornish...
.