Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.138
Gallery Label:
Waller Hugh Paton was a Scottish-born landscape painter who was based in Edinburgh for most of his career. Like all artists of his generation, he experienced the transformation of Britain wrought by the Industrial Revolution. In this view of the town of Paisley, Scotland, a steam locomotive pulls a string of freight cars across the new railway bridge. Paisley’s mills took cotton imported from the slave-based plantations in the American South and wove it into textiles printed with the popular Paisley pattern, a design that originated in Mughal India, then under British rule. This painting romanticizes and celebrates the urban industrial landscape, giving a sublime grandeur to a railway bridge at dusk with steam and gas lamps enhancing the drama of the scene. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
