Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-mctaggart-366" aria-label="More by William McTaggart" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William McTaggart</a>
Emigrants
Purchased 1931
adults
boat - non-specific
child
children
coast
displacement
family
family
history
migration
people
places
politics and society
Scotland
sea
seascapes and coasts
social comment
society
society: emigration, 19th c.
storm
transport: water
UK countries and regions
weather
woman
<p>When McTaggart finished his training at the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, he practised as a portrait painter with a minutely realistic technique. He became more interested in painting figures in landscape, and by the 1880s his handling of paint was much broader. He painted the sea and coastline, in works that are reminiscent of Courbet. The series of ‘emigrants’ that he painted combine these interests with a subject of serious social concern in Scotland, the emigration of people from the West Coast to live in Canada and Australia. McTaggart had first-hand experience of such emigration in his own family.</p><p><em>Gallery label, November 2016</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
15 June 2005 – 4 September 2005
2005-09-04
15 June 2005 – 4 September 2005
2005-09-04
2005-06-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-06-15
A Picture of Britain
Exhibition
9 December 2005 – 4 June 2006
2006-06-04
9 December 2005 – 26 March 2006
2006-03-26
2005-12-09
National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia)
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au
21 April 2006 – 4 June 2006
2006-06-04
2006-04-21
National Museum of Australia (Canberra, Australia)
http://www.nma.gov.au
2005-12-09
Exiles and Emigrants: Epic Journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era
Loan-out
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
2012-11-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-05
Gallery 9
Collection based display
7 August 2014 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
7 August 2014
2014-08-07
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-08-07
Gallery 9
Collection based display
The Emigrants
support: 946 × 1410 mm
frame: 1365 × 1823 × 152 mm
Purchased 1931
<p>The full title of this work is <i>Emigrants Leaving the Hebrides</i> and it is the first of three major works by McTaggart on the subject of emigration. The other two are <i>The Emigrants - America </i>(1891-4, Miss Flure Grossart) and <i>The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship </i>(1895, National Gallery of Scotland), and, as with the Tate picture, there are replicas and variants of both. 

</p><p>McTaggart's sister, Barbara, and her husband were among the vast number of people who emigrated from the West Coast of Scotland to America and Canada in the mid-nineteenth century. The theme of emigration was at the back of McTaggart's mind from the time of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>'s conception in 1883.  In this year he painted the headland, at Carrdale, in Argyllshire, from which the emigrants were to leave, as a straightforward <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a>.  In the same year an account of the Highland Clearances, collected and compiled by Alexander Mackenzie, was published; and the Crofter's Commission was appointed to look into individual cases of eviction. It was therefore amid debates about land ownership and emigration that McTaggart conceived the theme for this picture. Nevertheless the emigrants were not added to the painting until towards the end of the decade.  They are shown rowing out from a lonely stretch of coast to meet a three-masted, square-rigged sailing ship.  As Lindsay Errington has pointed out, it is far more likely that at this date they would have departed by steamer from the Clyde and therefore McTaggart's treatment is retrospective and historicised.

</p><p>Probably the most distinctive feature of this work is McTaggart's handling of paint.  In 1883 he may have seen the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/impressionism" title="Glossary definition for 'Impressionism'"><span>Impressionist</span></a> exhibition staged by Durand-Ruel at Dowdeswell's Gallery in Bond Street; and certainly from this date onwards he began painting even his largest <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvases</span></a> out of doors. Rather like those in an Impressionist painting, the figures in the foreground are absorbed by the surrounding landscape. However, in this work McTaggart's broad handling, his use of the palette knife and the sense of the approaching storm are much closer to Constable than to the work of Monet. In order to give the picture a sense of movement he copies Constable's method of applying flickering white highlights to all parts of the canvas. Like Constable, he varies his brushstrokes, in order to capture the different textures of sky, sea and land. He also uses a buff priming, which appears patchily in the darker areas of the sky. 

</p><p>McTaggart painted a small replica of this image in 1891 (private collection) and reworked it in 1891-8 (Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery).  The later work is more loosely handled and 'impressionistic' than this first version.  In the right foreground a box bears the letters 'AMERICA'; and on the far right a rainbow symbolises the emigrants' optimism as they travel to a new life. 

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Lindsay Errington, <i>William McTaggart 1835-1910</i>, Edinburgh 1989, pp.105-9.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>December 2000<br/></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>When McTaggart finished his training at the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, he practised as a portrait painter with a minutely realistic technique. He became more interested in painting figures in landscape, and by the 1880s his handling of paint was much broader. He painted the sea and coastline, in works that are reminiscent of Courbet. The series of ‘emigrants’ that he painted combine these interests with a subject of serious social concern in Scotland, the emigration of people from the West Coast to live in Canada and Australia. McTaggart had first-hand experience of such emigration in his own family.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2016-11-15T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
adults boat - non-specific child children coast displacement family family history migration people places politics and society Scotland sea seascapes and coasts social comment society society: emigration, 19th c. storm transport: water UK countries and regions weather woman