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Painter and Laird Farquharson owned a 20,000-acre (8,100 ha) estate at Finzean, Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, where he enjoyed painting wintery scenes, particularly of sheep. This in turn had led to his nickname of "Frozen Mutton Farquharson".Farquharson's considerable commercial success was based on the snow scenes he exhibited almost annually at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1894 until 1925, and celebrated printsellers Frost & Reed assured him a steady income by selling deluxe editions of his works. This subject is one of his most celebrated, and the primary version (now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery) was shown at the RA in 1903. Farquharson was known to create several versions of his best works, either to sell as replicas or to retain as aides memoires. Often artists painted replicas for engravers to work from when the original painting was not available and it is possible that one of these replicas served such a purpose; a highly popular print of The Shortening Winter's Day is near a Close sold in the many thousands by Farquharson's publisher Frost & Reed.
Royal Academy of Arts Laird Finzean Lady Lever Art Gallery Aberdeenshire