Books about the Journeys

John Garvey has published two books, covering two parts of Daniell’s journey.

William Daniell’s Isle of Skye & Raasay

This takes the reader around the islands of Skye and Raasay. The book contains high resolution copies of 17 Daniell aquatints, and good copies of 11 Daniell’s sketches. The latter are reproduced with the permission of the British Museum, most of which have not been published before.

FOREWORD by IAIN BAIN (Director of publications at the Tate Gallery)

There can be few of enquiring mind, who when travelling in the Highlands have not at some time come across the work of William Daniell on the walls of places where they take their rest. An Academician and distinguished painter in oils, he also had matchless skill in the magical process of aquatint engraving. Daniell’s great work A Voyage Round Great Britain is without question the finest of the many splendid topographical books published in the early years of the 19th century. His views of Scotland’s western coast show him at his very best. With a long interest in the processes of illustration of the period and a close connection with Daniell’s surviving copper plates, combined with a long affection for Skye and with crofter forbears in Durinish and Bernisdale, it gives me great pleasure to see Professor Garvey’s new and original account of this part of Daniell’s enterprise. The present day photographs of the views which inspired the artist and the first publication of hitherto little known correspondence and preliminary sketches add much to the book’s value. Any readers, natives or visitors, blessed with curiosity, will find their knowledge and experience of the islands much enhanced.

William Daniell’s Inverness & the Moray Firth

This takes the reader down the coast from Thurso on the Pentland Firth to Banff on the Moray Firth The book contains high resolution copies of 30 Daniell’s aquatints. Unfortunately the corresponding sketches could not be traced.

FROM THE FOREWORD by IAIN GORDON BROWN (Curator of the Royal Society of Edinburgh)

Daniell and his literary sources and informants (such as Scott) apart, it is the coast itself in all its wild and dramatic geology of sea-girt stack and wave-swept creek, and the structures upon and adjacent to it, that is the real protagonist of this book. Its wildness is well illustrated in Daniell’s fine plates, and well evoked in the range of writers quoted by John Garvey, and also by his own personal observations on this or that scene. Thus his book is also, in part, a modern as well and an antiquarian travelogue. With Garvey as guide, we learn much Scottish history, both national and local, on the way as we follow Daniell’s route.

Both books have been published by Matador.