Loch Katrine

The son of the portrait and landscape painter, Nathan Theodore Fielding, Copley Fielding became the best known of six children who all practised painting, particularly in watercolours. In 1809 he settled in London where he studied with John Varley, whose sister-in-law he married. From 1816 he divided his time between London and towns on the south coast of England. He was highly prolific, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Old Water-Colour Society (where he exhibited 1,748 works between 1813 and 1855). Many of his later watercolours repeat earlier subjects and compositions. He specialized in coastal scenes and views in Wales and the Lake District; he was particularly admired for his depiction of misty distances. This is a view in central Scotland which became a popular subject for painters in the early nineteenth century, and the inclusion of cattle create a scene of pastoral tranquility.