Born in Greenwich, William Callow as a youth joined the circle of Copley Fielding and was introduced to plein air sketching. Under Theodore and Thales Fielding, he colored prints and learned aquatint before studying the principles of watercolor in 1825. He moved to Paris in 1829 at the invitation of Thales and lived with Newton Fielding.¹ He was surrounded by a colony of British artists who were impacted by the work of Richard Parkes Bonington. In 1831 he met Bonington’s influential follower Thomas Shotter Boys, with whom he shared a studio by 1833. Callow subsequently participated in the 1834 Salon and became drawing master to the family of King Louis Philippe.² Upon Callow’s election in 1838 as an associate in the Society of Painters in Water Colours in London, the Spectator noted that he was “not known in this country, but who has studied in the French School . . . and is of the dashing style of execution.”³ Between 1835 and 1840, Callow traveled throughout continental Europe, keeping detailed diaries of his visits and gathering subjects, later evidenced by his watercolors.⁴ His popularity brought him back to London in 1841, and his imagery catered to a growing middle-class audience who had toured Europe. Though his work after 1860 was considered “a little mannered and conventional,” a 1907 exhibition lionized Callow as the last surviving link to Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable.⁵
 
Queen Victoria’s consistent visits to Scotland encouraged her English subjects to follow suit. The robust circulation of landscape prints, novels, and tourist guidebooks of Scotland promoted a Highland identity distinguishing the region’s people, customs, and natural features.⁶ Artists retreated to Scotland as well, depicting its castles, natural beauty, and dramatic rocky landscape. On the “petit tour,” visitors would follow a standard route, starting in Glasgow and ending in Edinburgh or vice versa, stopping at sites such as Dumbarton, Falls of Clyde, and Lochs Lomond and Katrine. Landed aristocratic estates, such as Breadalbane at Taymouth, Atholl at Blair, and Argyll at Inveraray, were also key destinations, as suggested by William Gilpin in his Scottish Tour of 1789.⁷
 
Callow took a journey to Scotland about 1842, traveling from Madeley Manor in Staffordshire, where he was giving drawing lessons, by steamer up the Clyde to Glasgow and Edinburgh.⁸ He returned again in the summer of 1849. Jan Reynolds notes, “William Callow was in the habit of always carrying a small sketch pad. These little books, often with leather spines, were pocket-rubbed and filled with swift impressions and sharp observations of detail.”⁹ This watercolor was made on January 27, when he stopped at Inveraray Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Argyll, in the majestic West Highlands of Scotland. In his diary, he records the occasion: “In 1849 I made a sketching tour in the west of Scotland, arriving at Glasgow whilst the Queen and Prince Albert were there, and afterwards visiting the Kyles of Bute and Inveraray, where my wife and I stayed for a month in most primitive but comfortable quarters, being waited up on by a maid without shoes or stockings.”¹⁰

In this watercolor, Callow’s characteristic cool tones and broad, translucent brushstrokes work well with the scene. Tall, thin trees hug the left side of the composition, and the right opens to successive planes of rocks and fallen trees in the foreground, extending to a broad field before reaching the Duke of Argyll’s house. The castle is next to a thicket of trees in the middle ground and nestled on the shore of Loch Fyne, seen at right. The misty Dun na Cuaiche mountain range appears behind the estate. The Castle of Archibald Campbell, the 3rd Duke of Argyll and 1st Earl of Ilay (1682–1761), was inspired by a sketch by Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard in the 1700s.¹¹ The castle was completed in the 1760s, though the duke never lived to see it finished. Archibald Campbell inherited the estate from his brother, the 2nd Duke of Argyll, and was responsible for the construction of the castle and for developing the garden, building bridges, and canalizing the river to enhance its beauty. He also built the watchtower, the Doocot, seen in this watercolor. The long avenue of beech trees, planted by Campbell's ancestors in the previous century, is portrayed by Callow in other sketches from his visit.¹² The duke also demolished the town of Inveraray, moving the settlement and its populace away from his castle and further down the lochside, giving his estate a more picturesque view.¹³ By the time William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, visited the estate in 1803, it was already popularized in several picturesque tours of Scotland, and later in series of printed views.¹⁴

Callow made several watercolors of the area on the same tour.¹⁵ He exhibited two views of Inveraray at the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1850.¹⁶ The Athenaeum wrote, “We congratulate Mr. William Callow on a decided advance. His style has of late years been gradually refining without losing its breadth—and his eye enters more searchingly than it did into the minutiae of his subjects. . . . His hand—always bold—is acquiring grace of execution. His best drawing here is ‘Inveraray Castle, the Seat of his Grace the Duke of Argyll.’ The castle mid-distance, the finely drawn mountains in the background, and the lake on the right are all aided in their air of truthfulness by the look of reality given, as the eye enters the scene, to some trunks of recently felled beeches on which the woodmen are still at work.” Though this article describes a different watercolor of exhibition size, Callow has taken a similar vantage point for this sheet.¹⁷ When interviewed at the age of ninety-five, Callow stated that he preferred “Winsor and Newton colors and hard, non-absorbent paper.” He did not prepare his paper with “staining” or “washing” instead “commenc[ing] with the tint required,” and he claimed to not work wet-on-wet, instead allowing each layer to dry before applying the next.¹⁸ —Dena M. Woodall