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Overview
Self-taught as an artist, James McBey (1883-1959) was born in Newburgh near Aberdeen. He worked as a bank clerk from the age of fifteen, learning about art from books. After reading about etching, he became interested in printmaking, producing his first prints using a domestic mangle and building his own printing press. An admirer of Rembrandt's prints, McBey launched his artistic career in 1910 by travelling to the Netherlands. He returned to live in London before working in Egypt as an Official War Artist in 1917. McBey reached the peak of his popularity as an etcher in the 1920s, but when the print market collapsed due to the Depression, he mainly produced portraits on commission. McBey didn't associate himself with artistic movements, but saw himself as a traditional, skilled craftsman. Following his marriage in 1931, McBey lived mostly in Morocco, and during World War Two, the United States. He died in Tangier, Morocco, in 1959.
McBey remains one of Scotland's - and Britain's - greatest printmakers, who intelligently continued in the vein of James McNeill Whistler, and who along with his older contemporaries, William Strang, Muirhead Bone and particularly D.Y. Cameron, constituted an extraordinary body of Scottish etchers. By being essentially self-taught, McBey is arguably the most remarkable of them all.
Although this etching/drypoint is dated 1921, it was inspired by McBey's experience as a war artist in the Middle East in 1918 and is from his first Palestine set of etchings and drypoints On the left is Mount Hermon, and in the plain below, a column of Lighthorse cavalry, travelling through Lebanon, have crossed the Jordan after leaving Kunaitra, and are moving on Damascus at sunrise.
See:
Aberystwyth University Artist Collections, 'James McBey', https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/art/gallery-museum/collections/artist-collections/mcbeyjames/
National Galleries Scotland, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/james-mcbey
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art June 2018