拍品专文
The quotation which gives the picture its title refers to William Scrope, Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in the Tweed, London (John Murray), 1843. Landseer was among the book's illustrators, and the picture is based on one of his designs (reproduced lithographically by Louis Haghe, facing p.204). The other illustrators were Landseer's young brother Edwin, Sir David Wilkie, William Simson and E.W. Cooke, while a third Landseer brother, Tom, was among the engravers. Wilkie had died in 1841, so the book must have been in preparation for some time.
In Landseer's illustration the monks are shown being spied upon by a little devil on the right. This is a reference to the legend, discussed at length in Scrope's text, that the magician Michael Scott was at loggerheads with 'the holy monks of Old Melrose', and sent a devil or 'imp' to bother them. However, they too were able to draw on occult forces, having an ally in another wizard, Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildunne. Thus by 'exorcisms' and other means they 'put Michael Scott's power in some danger.'
The mood of the picture is a good deal more sedate than that of the illustration, which is entitled A Pretty Kettle of Fish. The composition is much the same, with glimpses of the River Tweed in the middle distance and the Eildon hills beyond. But the illustration's jolly roisterers have become a sober group of monks, presided over by their benign abbot, enjoying a quiet al fresco lunch with friends. The cauldron, tailored to the party's appetite, is now much smaller. The monk who formerly spea... on the ground has become a fashionably dressed youth. Thomas the Rhymer is still present (the figure to the right of the abbot), but instead of carousing with his companions in sagely strokes his beard, as if contemplating which spell to use from the weighty to me on his lap. Above all, the 'imp' has disappeared, to be replaced by a pretty bare-footed servant girl and a young male attendant. The huntsman with hawks and hounds in the middle distance to the left is also an addition.
The picture may be seen as an 'answer' to Edwin Landseer's immensly popular Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time (Chatsworth), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834. Indeed certain figures occur in both pictures: the standing abbot, dressed in the white habit and black cloak of an Augustinian monk, the young girl and the boy servant (although he is more of a falconer in Bolton Abbey). Both pictures gained much of their contemporary resonance from the fact that Sir Walter Scott had treated the theme of late medieval monastic life in his novel The Monastery and its sequel The Abbot (both 1820). It was also Scott who had popularised the legend of Michael Scott and the monks of Melrose, giving a version of it in The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
In Landseer's illustration the monks are shown being spied upon by a little devil on the right. This is a reference to the legend, discussed at length in Scrope's text, that the magician Michael Scott was at loggerheads with 'the holy monks of Old Melrose', and sent a devil or 'imp' to bother them. However, they too were able to draw on occult forces, having an ally in another wizard, Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildunne. Thus by 'exorcisms' and other means they 'put Michael Scott's power in some danger.'
The mood of the picture is a good deal more sedate than that of the illustration, which is entitled A Pretty Kettle of Fish. The composition is much the same, with glimpses of the River Tweed in the middle distance and the Eildon hills beyond. But the illustration's jolly roisterers have become a sober group of monks, presided over by their benign abbot, enjoying a quiet al fresco lunch with friends. The cauldron, tailored to the party's appetite, is now much smaller. The monk who formerly spea... on the ground has become a fashionably dressed youth. Thomas the Rhymer is still present (the figure to the right of the abbot), but instead of carousing with his companions in sagely strokes his beard, as if contemplating which spell to use from the weighty to me on his lap. Above all, the 'imp' has disappeared, to be replaced by a pretty bare-footed servant girl and a young male attendant. The huntsman with hawks and hounds in the middle distance to the left is also an addition.
The picture may be seen as an 'answer' to Edwin Landseer's immensly popular Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time (Chatsworth), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834. Indeed certain figures occur in both pictures: the standing abbot, dressed in the white habit and black cloak of an Augustinian monk, the young girl and the boy servant (although he is more of a falconer in Bolton Abbey). Both pictures gained much of their contemporary resonance from the fact that Sir Walter Scott had treated the theme of late medieval monastic life in his novel The Monastery and its sequel The Abbot (both 1820). It was also Scott who had popularised the legend of Michael Scott and the monks of Melrose, giving a version of it in The Lay of the Last Minstrel.