Fishing from the rocks

Joseph Henderson exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy from 1853 until 1926, and in London during the 1870s and 1880s. In his article 'Robert Scott Lauder, R.S.A., and his Pupils' (Art Journal, 1898, pp. 367-71) Edward Pinnington noted the artist's ability to portray the sea's subtle and various effects: 'Mr Henderson paints the sea of Scottish bays and firths, a living, jubilant, musical sea, which flings a veil of foam over jutting rocks, and throws itself in playful ripples on a sandy, pebbly shore. There is vigour in the salt wind, and there is a beauty few painters catch, both in its changing hues of blue and grey-green within the bay and in the warmer tints borrowed from seaweed in the shallows, and from the greys and umbers of the beach. To such aspects of the sea there is no end.'