The Taffner Collection (370) Fri, 7th Sep 2012, Edinburgh Lot 112 Estimate: £10000 - £15000 + Fees § ‡ JAMES HERBERT MACNAIR (SCOTTISH 1868-1955) ‘THE LOVERS’ signed and dated bottom right J. HERBERT MCNAIR/ 1893, indistinctly signed lower left *MCNAIR, watercolour 23 x 15cm (9 x 6in) Provenance: Mrs. C Armstrong, the artist's niece The Fine Art Society, London Barry Friedman Ltd., New York Exhibited: London, International Society (ISSPG), 1899, no. 210 London, The Fine Art Society 'Glasgow 1900' 1979, no. 88 Glasgow, Hunterian Art Gallery and Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery 'Doves and Dreams: The Art of Frances Macdonald and J. Herbert MacNair', 12th August 2006 - 22nd April 2007, exhib. ref. W48 Literature: Billcliffe, Roger 'J. H. MacNair in Glasgow and Liverpool', Annual Report and Bulletin of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1971, pp. 51, 68, fig. 40 Larner, Gerald and Celia 'The Glasgow Style', New York, 1979, pl. 132 Neat, Timothy 'Part Seen, Part Imagined: Meaning and Symbolism in the Work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald' Edinburgh 1994, illus. p. 30 Robertson, Pamela (Edit.) 'Doves and Dreams: The Art of Frances Macdonald and J. Herbert MacNair', Hampshire 2006, p. 171-172, exhib. ref. W48, cat. ill. 89 Note: One of the earliest Spook School watercolours where MacNair establishes his own vocabulary of menacing figures with an amalgam of erotic and threatening imagery. The drawing features colours that were to become a staple of the palette of The Four over the next few years, eerie blues and greens that contain their own powerful symbolism. The compositional scheme, of central figures framed by other indeterminate human forms, arranged as a framework in turn supporting, then attacking the main protagonists. This tension, combined with the sensual nature of the central pose, was to characterise much of the related work of the next four years..