3-080-336 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A Sunny Day in Winter, c1878. Allan James Hook came from a family of painters and travelled extensively with his father. In 1872 they had been in Shetland and in Allan James Hook's biography of his father he mentions that on the return trip they stayed with the Aberdeen art collector Alexander Macdonald and took the opportunity to paint the picturesque coastline:- "While we had been passing close inshore along the coast of Aberdeenshire in the steamer coming from Shetland, we had noticed some fishing villages that looked as if they might be worth a visit. So after our stay under Macdonald's roof we went northward and settled down for a time at Collieston, where my father found plenty of occupation for the rest of the northern summer". The Hooks returned to the North East several times and it must have been on one of these trips that this view was painted. Though the sea is calm and the sky clear Hook's quick brushstrokes imbue the scene with a lively freshness.