RSA Scottish Art
Sound of Iona
 | Artist: Adam Bruce Thomson |
| Title: Sound of Iona | |
| Year: c1971 | |
| Medium: watercolour on paper | |
| Dimensions: | |
| Suggested topic: | |
| Source: RSA | |
| View full screen image of this work | |
| Open print version of this work | |
| © the artist’s family | |
| Description: Adam Bruce Thomson was born in Edinburgh and he taught at the new Edinburgh College of Art, where William Gillies trained as one of his students and later became his colleague and friend. Like Gillies, he loved to paint the Western Isles and his passion was to capture the Scottish landscape and its ever-changing weather. This watercolour is called Sound of Iona and was painted late on in Thomson's life; it describes a view from Iona looking across the narrow channel of water to the island of Mull. The artist describes with enormous energy the white sands on the shore in the foreground and the pink granite coastline. The brushwork is very fluid and rapid and captures the effect of the changing weather, which seems to threaten rain with mixtures of blue and grey tones on the skyline. The wind scuttles the clouds and pushes the yacht speedily along. Although the scene is dramatic, the structure of the composition is very simple. Three horizontal bands describe the two coastlines, with the sea between them; a fourth band is devoted to the sky. This simple structure has allowed the artist to concentrate on capturing the mood and atmosphere of this wild landscape. | |
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