Sir Henry Raeburn, Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, 1795, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK. Public domain

We’ve chosen this delightful image of an 18th Century Scottish Presbyterian minister ice skating gracefully on Duddingston Loch to send our Season’s Greetings to all our Watermill friends and followers. Along with this festive message, we extend our best wishes for a healthy, successful, and creatively inspired New Year.

(While it’s been cold in Florence, our Winter base, we’ve seen no snow. The days around Christmas and the New Year have generally been cold but sunny, and the sky, that inimitable Italian blue. So I guess it’s just nostalgia for icy Scotland, where we lived for many years, that has prompted us to send season’s greetings which feature ice and snow. See also, the Monet picture below*.)

We’ve always loved this painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, officially entitled The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, but better known as The Skating Minister. He’s gliding across the ice with both arms folded across his chest, his dark suit in sharp contrast to the wintry backdrop. The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon has commented : “Perhaps this was the artist’s way of suggesting that, for all his apparent probity and self-restraint, the minister was at heart something of a romantic – a man, at any rate, with a penchant for communing with nature.”

The Reverend appears to be thoroughly enjoying himself—an unusual sight for a Church of Scotland minister! This light-hearted image reminds us of the joy that art and creativity can bring, themes we celebrate at the Watermill.

Celebrate the season with The Watermill! Discover sustainable painting holidays and creative retreats in Tuscany. Stay inspired and save the planet.

There’s even more artistic fun to be had on our world-renowned painting holidays in Tuscany. You won’t be cold, but you will be Cool and Green at the Watermill: all our bedrooms and public rooms are air-conditioned, powered by our hidden array of photovoltaic cells, which make us self-sufficient in electricity and save tons of carbon emissions from conventional power stations. Not only that, we’ve set up a scheme to remove the equivalent of 10,000 plastic bottles every year from our oceans.  This means our creative course guests will be ‘plastic neutral’ during their creative retreat with us.

‘Save the planet’  on all our creative courses and also enjoy inspirational teaching, warm hospitality, delicious food and wine, spectacular locations and, of course, the convivial company of like-minded people.

*The Season’s Greetings in this month’s Watermill Newsletter featured this wonderfully luminous snowy scene by Claude Monet. Learn more by subscribing to our newsletter.

Claude Monet. The Magpie. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.