Hugh Cameron RSA 1835-1918

Hugh Cameron was a native of Edinburgh, where he was born on 4th August 1835. Like most artists who have attained eminence, he early showed a predilection for the Fine Arts; and it was doubtless this which led to his being apprenticed, at the age of fourteen, to an Architect practising in the city.

But the boy’s interest was with the Painters’ craft, and before his apprenticeship was finished we find Cameron associated with the group
of students at the Trustees’ School, since known as Lauder’s Pupils. In 1854 he made his début at the Academy with a work entitled “Joseph Interpreting Pharaoh’s Chief Butler's Dream,” but it was not till 1859 that his picture “Going to the Hay,” now in the National Gallery, placed him in the fore front of the group.

“Going to the Hay,” besides bringing Cameron his Associateship in the November of that year, maybe said to have confirmed the bent of his genius on one of its strongest and most personal sides, his sympathy with the more healthy and joyous aspects of Scottish peasant life; and the catalogues of the succeeding ten years indicate such themes as “ A Deeside Lassie,” “The Hairst Rig” and “The Reaper.”

In the seventies similar lightsome subjects are interspersed with not a few of a graver nature. Of these “A Lonely Life” and « Age and Infancy” are
deeply pathetic and rank amongst the artist's greatest works. Side by side with such delineations of work-a-day life in field or cottage, there runs all through Cameron’s career a series of charming works dealing with childlife.

“ Playmates,” “Threading the Needle,” Help from Tiny Hands,”are titles which indicate the scope and themes of this fascinating department of the artist’s work, as it deals respectively with the play or tasks of his subjects.
Portraiture also claimed a share of his attention, and in those of ladies and children he often attains a quality rare in modern Art.

He was elected Academicianin 1869.
From 1876 to 1885 Cameron’s headquarters were in London. During those years he visited France, Italy, Germany and the Low Countries, spending a considerable time on the Italian Riviera, attracted by the picturesque attire of the inhabitants and the primitive industries associated with the cultivation of the Olive and the Vine on that romantic coast.

The removal to London made little change on Cameron’s exhibited work, as reflected in the Academy’s catalogues, “Haymakers at noonday” (1879) and “The Rivals” (1885) being as pronouncedly Scottish in character as those of the preceeding decades.

But the artist seems to have telt the danger of losing touch with the sources of his inspiration, and the middle eighties found him settled on the coast of Fife, where for a succession of years Largo Bay and its sands furnished a setting for his child bathers, fishers and castle builders.

But at the end, as not unfrequently happens, the veteran returned to the themes which had occupied his prime and in “A Toiler of the Hills” and “A Dayin Spring” produced works which in pathos and joyous abandonvie
with those of his best years.

In his illustration of the lives of the Scottish peasantry Hugh Cameron has done for his country what J. F. Millet and Josef Israels have done for theirs, and with an added joyous note which neither the Frenchman nor the Dutchman can claim. Nor can it be said of him, as it might of some others, that he has followed in the wake of the continental masters, for many of Cameron’s most successful and characteristic pictures were painted at a
date when those of Millet and Israels were unknown in Scotland.

Combining strong opinions on Art with breadth and toleration of view in regard to its manifold developments Cameron’s conversation there on and concerning the inter-relations of its various branches was always interesting. His simple, kindly nature attracted all who came within the sphere of his influence, and his wise counsel will be missed alike by the Art student and by those more advanced in their profession. He died on 15th July, after an illness of some months’ duration.

RSA Obituary from the 1918 RSA Annual Report