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In one of the last exhibitions of Scottish watercolourist William Alister Macdonald's work at London's Guildhall Art Gallery in 2001, his works were exhibited alongside contemporary black and white photographs of the same street view.
The City of London then, and now in the 21st century, would be largely unrecognisable to Macdonald, who lived from 1861 to 1956. Even in 1935 when he had returned from a 14-year absence in Tahiti and found a portfolio of forgotten paintings in his wife's Earls Court home, there was a surge of sentimentality for the lost buildings and streets of historic London. This prompted Lord Wakefield to buy the entire exhibition at the Arlington Gallery and donate the works to the City. As such the value of Macdonald's watercolours has even greater academic value for anyone interested or studying London's architectural history.
Macdonald's watercolours provide the only pictorial record of many ancient landmarks that had disappeared by 1935: the Old Dick Whittington tavern, established in the 1400s and the Little Wonder Eating House in Smithfield (painted in 1907), Saracen's Head Yard in Bishopsgate (1912).
Macdonald painted many of the large City thoroughfares, with St Paul's and the spires of other masterpieces by Sir Christopher Wren, notable reminders of London's previous upheavals and destruction, and the importance of preserving its historic architecture. But what clearly captured the delight of reviewers of the 1935 exhibition were the many paintings of the lost hidden alleys linking these landmarks, such as Watling Street.
Another important topographical record of a lost landmark is Macdonald’s watercolour of Catherine Court, Trinity Square, looking East (1912), a little tributary of Seething Lane, once the home and haunt of diarist Samuel Pepys. The painting preserves, as the writer and historian E. Beresford Chancellor put it, "the quiet distinction of the domestic architecture…with their matured red brick-work and their decorative over-doorways, and that repose which seems to-day as much as they a thing of the past".
Macdonald and his wife Lucy lived in the Temple, not far from Lincoln's Inn Fields. The artist returned frequently over the years, attracted by the classical grandeur of buildings by Inigo Jones and other "splendid houses, many of them still full of the delicate carving and decorative audacities of an earlier time" (Chancellor again). Other corners frequented by lawyers are Field Court, Gray's Inn (which he painted in 1904), Staple Inn Courtyard (1906), Old Houses in Fetter Lane (1907), Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street (1906) — all gone by the time they were exhibited in 1935.
In Westminster, Macdonald found a constant source of inspiration and fascination, buildings ranging from the ancient ecclesiastic to many eras of government reflecting national history. His watercolour of Abingdon Street (1907) records the last remains of domestic architecture of previous centuries capturing the sweep of the street and contrast to the Abbey and Whitehall in middle and distant background, while in Doorway in Great College Street, Westminster (1907) he deftly records the decorative ironmongery and masonry detail that surround a domestic doorway. The Houses of Parliament are a frequent subject in his paintings, sometimes in the atmospheric background as in Storey's Gate, Westminster (1910), or the main attraction, reflected in the Thames in Westminster Abbey and Houses of Parliament from Lambeth (1910) where stately grandeur is offset by the humble river boats in the foreground — now rarely a feature of the Thames.
From the Pool of London in the east to the upper reaches of the tidal Thames in Richmond, Macdonald spent many years painting from the bankside and sometimes from boats. One of the earliest in the Wakefield Collection is Hay's Wharf, Tooley Street (1896) where ships' masts and cranes play counterpoint with ghostly Tower Bridge in the background.
In Clearing the Site for the new County Hall, Westminster (1910) we see a scene of demolition amongst working London that would have been commonplace along the Embankment and the South Bank of the Thames. But aside from the changing landmarks it is the ability to capture the sunshine through the fogs and mists, that magically transform what Chancellor describes as "the rotten, often entirely disused, wharves and warehouses, dreary when the tide is up, and unutterably depressing when it is low".
London's bridges were also a fascination for Macdonald, and from 1898 to 1914 he captured London, Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Westminster, Vauxhall and Lambeth — many of which were rebuilt or replaced by 1935. Lambeth Bridge is the subject of five watercolours in the collection taken from various points of view.
These meticulous paintings, and sketches that led to many of his works, remain important topographic records of old pre-mechanised London, that have rarely been seen and have largely been overlooked by historians and art critics. It is hardly surprising as art historians have largely focused on the many Modernist movements of the 20th century and photographic and digital media have overwhelmed us with images of London.
William Alister Macdonald: Watercolours from Thurso, the Thames, and Tahiti by Iain Macdonald, published by Unicorn
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