| Description | Letter dated 10 May 1867 to Macdonald from George Reid, R.S.A., and J.F. White, Hotel des Etrangers, Rue Vivienne, Paris, hoping that he received the Royal Academy catalogue sent from London, admiration for Academy exhibition, with particular comments on Pettie (small sketch with description of 'The Conspirators'), Erskine Nicol, Orchardson, Tom Faed, Cassie's 'Dunnottar Castle', hung too high 'to do him much good', some of John Phillip's work, with sketch and description: 'none of your namby pamby sentimental sort of beauties', Tom Gray's picture 'The Writing Master', Peter Graham's landscape, sketched and described, Cassie's inability to cope with heat, looking for paintings for Macdonald in Paris, but 'Most of the great pictures here belong to happy owners and the ones which are for sale (by good artists) are said to belong to picture dealers who know what to ask', meeting with Mollinger and Artz, Macdonald's work (in granite?) in an exhibition in Paris and much admired, 'The Exhibition is evidently the last of the International things of the sort. The world couldn't stand another for a generation. The idea has been exhausted …' going on to describe the scene at the exhibition park, 'the suburb of the Exh. is a sort of higgledy pickeldy of mosques, kiosks, Swiss cottages (with peasant) maidens in costume selling beer, Moorish divans with native music of most peculiar sort of monotonous melody, British & American Bible Society's stall, Tea shops with live Chinamen, all hashed up together in the most grotesque way … The whole place is immense and would take weeks to see rightly, but a man would be out of his judgement long before he got to the end of his work', Mollinger's proposed visit to Scotland, sketch of Reid and White arriving in Montmartre to find Mollinger still in his bed, comments on the novelty of everything and a few sketches of types. |