Tales of the Kirkcudbright Artists - Haig Gordon
Published 14 July 2006
172 pages
70 colour, 130 black/white illustrations
Paperback
(isbn 0-9553183-1-9) £15.99
Hardback
(isbn 0-9553183-0-0) £29.99
Order at the online bookshop
In racy and sometimes provocative profiles, the author explains what attracted them to the town, and how they got on with the often bemused locals.
All the well-known names are featured afresh. Why did E A Hornel never marry? Just how ‘mad’ was Jessie M King? What was it about the town that made Sam Peploe vow he’d never come back?
The many other characters whose eccentricities brought colour to the Kirkcudbright way of life include: the cartoonist who created the St Trinian’s Girls; the potter who preached in the streets; and the painter who claimed to have sketched the Loch Ness Monster.
The book is richly illustrated, showing the artists’ homes, their studios and their work.
Haig Gordon is a Kirkcudbright native who has worked in both Scotland and England as a journalist and broadcaster.
E A Hornel, the radical ‘Glasgow Boys’ painter whose experimental work outraged conventional opinion:
When the proposed purchase was debated by the city council, one member stated that they ‘ought not to permit themselves to be either wheedled or coerced to purchase such an abortion as Mr Hornel’s ‘Summer’…’
Hornel’s friend and collaborator George Henry whose A Galloway Landscape baffled the public:
I have seen the spot where it was painted, a very ordinary field with a hill in it; but Henry introduced a blue burn, painted with a palette knife, around it; then put a stain over all, and it became an object of derision for the man in the street…
The eccentric Jessie M King with the weird dress sense:
Her everyday clothing was so outlandish that locals would sometimes ask to borrow pieces for fancy-dress parties. To visitors she was pointed out as one of the sights of the town. To the local children, until they got to know her better, she was an alarming spectacle , an apparition from another world.
William Robson, the well-travelled gentleman painter, who transferred his household from the island of Capri to the High Street of Kirkcudbright:
The culture of Italy pervaded the house. Italian was the daily language, since Carmella and Maria never got above pidgin English. The cooking…owed little to mince-and-tatties Scotland…an exotic contrast to the austerity of between-the-wars Kirkcudbright.
The crime novelist Dorothy L Sayers who had the Kirkcudbright artists fighting among themselves in Five Red Herrings:
She is said to have got the idea for the book after quarrelling with a real-life artist in Kirkcudbright. Jessie King told her: ‘Why don’t you go and write a book and murder him in it?’
The Scottish Colourist S J Peploe who finally decided he could tolerate Kirkcudbright no longer:
Lush grass and green trees, you can see nothing for leaves – no distance, nothing for the imagination.
Robert Macaulay Stevenson, the ‘Glasgow Boys’ veteran with a fondness for drink:
…under the influence of the vintages which he loved, and loved to discourse about, he would impart to the young the ripe wisdom of age.
The well-connected Cecile Walton who was adored by the street kids of Kirkcudbright:
…we’d often go knocking on the door of Miss Wallton’s studio and play inside. We were never turned away. It was an amazing place. I remember I used to use her lipstick.
William Miles Johnston who could, when necessary, turn his studio into an assembly-line:
…a farmer was so struck by an agricultural scene that Bill had painted that he came into the shop and announced, ‘I’ll hae twal’. Bill had no trouble in producing another eleven.
The cartoonist Ronald Searle who got his inspiration for the St Trinian’s Girls from two Kirkcudbright sisters:
It all goes to show what can happen to an unsuspecting boy of twenty-one, far from home, lost in the fleshpots of Kirkcudbright, when he is invited in for a slice of haggis…
Alastair Dallas, the artist still remembered for some unexpected work:
Alastair’s name lives on in the world of Nessie-watching. The fanatics who devote their spare time to investigating whether or not there really is a monster within Loch Ness still earnestly debate the ‘ Dallas drawings’.
Phyllis Bone, the eminent Royal Scottish Academician, who was obsessed with cute animals in both her sculpture and her writings:
It is a childlike story of Romp the wild buck and Dainty the pet roe who… embark on ‘married life’ and have an offspring called Button. It reads like an anthropomorphic Mills & Boon for lonely animal-loving spinsters.