Educator, trainer, writer, learner.
Just beginning PhD with St. Andrews and Lincoln Universities. Current title is 'Power in Place: What do paintings of Scotland’s seas and coasts, from Victorian to Modern times, reveal about Scottishness?'
Recently advised on Science curriculum development in N. Nigeria (2015-19). From 2012-15, supported the Ministries of Somaliland and Puntland to clearly define and update the curriculum in formal and non-formal educational sectors.
Paintings of the sea almost always show the ocean as a 2D surface. Whilst we know that there is a depth of material, of colour, of light and shadow, beneath the constantly moving water, we can neither see nor hear it. Yet there are paintings of the Scottish sea beneath the waves.
Zarh Pritchard (1866-1956), regularly bathed in the Firth of Forth from Portobello beach from the age of 10 and in his teens, he began to sketch what he had seen when swimming below the waves. Following an education in Art in Edinburgh, he learned in Tahiti how to paint below the surface. His were the first underwater paintings, proper seascapes.
His biographer, Elizabeth N. Shor writes that ‘for his underwater work Pritchard used lambskin soaked with oil and brushes thoroughly soaked in oil. Wearing a diver’s helmet, serviced by a tank from a boat on the surface, he sank to the seafloor with a coral or stone weight, selected the view that he wanted, had his canvas and materials lowered to him from the boat above, and painted for about half an hour’.
From Amazing Stories, 1948
He painted, fully immersed, off Tahiti and Scotland and other shores.
His paintings give us a different view of the Scottish seas, a space
Zahr Pritchard. 1910. Bream in 25 Feet of Water Off the West Coast of Scotland. Brooklyn Museum.
When painting the sea, George Reid (1841-1913) habitually positioned his viewer a hundred metres or so away from the water rather than on the foreshore. This enabled him to include elements that would define the space as a specific place.
The picture’s dimensions extend the central character’s trudge from sea to home. Its sombre colours contribute to an atmosphere of weariness and rough life lived, which is compounded by the repetitive shapes; the three cottages, the clumps of shadowed hard turf, the jumbled upright poles. It has many narrative elements. The figure, stepping wearily uphill, is bent over to carry a heavy basket. He walks away from the sea , perhaps away from a hard day’s work, towards the darkly shadowed cottages. The rutted unsurfaced road and the isolated flapping clothes on a makeshift line suggest that these homes are poorly serviced. The title is precise, stamping the artist’s portrayal with a specific place and time. We know where Reid painted most of his landscapes and seascapes because the titles are almost always specific. He defined a place.
From this example, we can extract some seminal elements of a definition of a painter’s place.
Firstly, place is delineated by spatial elements such as topography. In Reid’s picture, the topography is an identifier but also a metaphor. Its features define the place but are also drawn in such a way that they echo the narrative. For example, the uphill gradient from beach to cottages likely corresponds to reality, but it can also represent the figure’s uphill struggle in life. Its slope is mirrored by the land horizon that bisects the picture, whilst also connecting the two areas of central interest in this figure’s world, work and home.
Secondly, place is defined by the physical environment, part of which is stable like the hill and the sea, and part of which is not, like the weather. The social environment is also significant, represented by elements like buildings, objects and active figures, and also by reminders of esoteric things like home and work. Viewers are reminded of their own spatial experiences in the environment, of trudging up a hill.
Thirdly, a definition of place also carries a temporal meaning, which may or may not be explicit. Kevin Lynch expresses the idea more starkly by asking the question, what time is this place? Reid answers the question by including a calendar date in his title, and also with the clothing that the figure wears, the cart tracks in the mud and so on.
Finally, a definition of place implies that the person invests their physical environment with emotional attachment. This can take many forms and may often be so complex that it is difficult to research. There has recently been an increase in scholarly interest in researching the concept of genus loci, the spirit of a place. Reid has somehow communicated the atmosphere of early Victorian Buchanhaven village.
Space is experienced and understood by artists in different ways. There are empirical studies which support this conclusion, but it is simpler to compare two paintings of the same ‘space’, in this case the ‘empty’ seas around St. Kilda.
The painted surfaces are not simply a record of the physical three-dimensional reality that will be experienced at a specific latitude and longitude on the planet’s surface. These two artists inhabited that space and each brought back a memory of a unique experience. From his empirical observations, Golledge concluded that it is misleading to analyse human special understandings by referring to an objective ‘real’ environment. To develop his point bluntly, the single authentic world does not exist and an analysis of paintings should instead focus on how painters react in relation to how they perceive the space around them.
For some time, I have been energised by the hegemonic role of English art within British art history scholarship. A Gramscian-style analysis suggests that Scottish, Irish and Welsh (sub)cultures are limited in form and direction by the power and blind-spots of British cultural definitions. Hence, an artist like William McTaggart or Joan Eardley is allocated a peripheral status, and their work is not seen and largely ignored by people outside Scotland.
Eardley, Joan Kathleen Harding; (1921-1963),Self-portrait; National Galleries of Scotland;
Today, 24th May 2020, the Guardian called for a UK exhibition of Joan Eardley’s work, quoting author Laura Cumming as saying that ‘it is both a shock and a scandal to me that in all these years she (Eardley) has had no such recognition outside Scotland. This is the equivalent of ignoring a Käthe Kollwitz, a Gwen John or a Louise Bourgeois. London needs to wake up to Eardley.’
Joseph Henderson was 38 years of age when he painted this canvas, titled ‘A Northerly Breeze’. It is a portrait of the Scottish sea, its waves inundating the space to marginalise the figures of the women and the ship.
Henderson, Joseph; A Northerly Breeze; The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum.
There are myriad writings, many of them challenging and scholarly, that explore the apparent distinctiveness of Scottish paintings. Whilst reviewing many images of the sea for clues about the genesis and form of any distinctive Scottishness, I realised that one contextual feature was always consistent for the painters, irrespective of the year, the local and national background, their domestic circumstances and personal histories. This was the land itself, that piece of the Earth’s surface that we currently call Scotland.
Any painter who faced outwards from a Scottish foreshore would experience the same Scottish sea. To explore the distinctiveness of such portraits as Henderson’s, one must examine the fundamentals of their Geography – the space, place, and location of what the artist was responding to. The concepts of space and place have been extensively discussed by cultural geographers such as Doreen Massey, Yi-Fu Tuan, Raymond Williams and Tim Ingold. All these writers emphasise that spatiality has been ignored in traditional social history, which instead stresses history and time. It will be fascinating to apply their understandings to the analysis of Scottish paintings.
Places are defined by people. That seems to be common-sense, a self-evident truism. The place that is currently called ‘Edinburgh’ is, according to this view, ‘made’ by those who live and work and visit there. Although what about those who write about it from a distance, or who turn the place into a character in a film like ‘Trainspotting’?
This poster serves to ‘define’ Scotland as a place.
From Daily Mail article. ‘Vintage seaside posters capturing golden age of travel in Britain and Australia sell for $510,000 at New York auction’
This place is seagulls, empty seas, lounging smiles and happy men in kilts. The creator of this image has contributed a load of value-ridden codswollop to the definition of the place.
And sticking with Edinburgh, doesn’t my experience of the city that I live in make me knowledgeable in a deeper way about Edinburgh than a person who has always lived in Dover or Eastbourne? If true, this suggests that the people are defined by the landscapes they inhabit.
Tim Ingold in his books, examines the cultural geography of place and space. One axiom is that to be is to know and to know is to be. Just as people define Scotland from what they know, so also do they define themselves from what is experienced by being in the place that is Scotland. Ingold writes about what he calls ‘the dwelling perspective’. Essentially, just as we live actively in a locality, the material existence of that locality impacts on us.
Standing at the edge then, facing the sea, a painter will experience the touch of the wind, the smell of the brine, the sound of the waves, the refracted light. To know this Scottish place is to be – in a very specific ‘Scottish’ way.
During the past few decades, many scholars have explored ideas about space, place, location and related social concepts like nation, region and community. Doreen Massey for example worked out a notion of space-time, showing that history wasn’t just about time, geography not just about space. For instance, it matters that Wallace’s battle with the English army was at Stirling Bridge and not on Braveheart’s wide field; equally, it matters that there used to be a mucky loch where gardens now grow at the edge of Edinburgh’s Princes Street.
Space-time is a useful concept when analysing images too.
These two paintings show the Scottish sea. The first is linked to a specific place by its title and depicted objects such as the beach and the pier. It is also associated with a particular time, also by its signature and date and by depicted objects such as the children’s clothes and the condition of the pier, and perhaps by its artistic style. The second could be described as timeless; certainly a Neolithic woman who stood on the same beach on a windy day in 3000 B.C. would recognise what the artist painted in 2019 A.D. Could it also be described as placeless, or is there something here that ties it to the place where it was conceived?
There are books about Scottish art and Scottish artists, and they read like a pantheon of ‘greats’. The authors choose well-known stars like Alan Ramsay, David Wilkie, William McTaggart, Charles Rennie MacIntosh, The Scottish Colourists, The Glasgow boys, Susan Phillipsz. Even Joan Eardley will get a shoe-in, despite being born in Sussex. Celebrity status is important in selling exhibition tickets and books.
It’s a problem though to choose examples of Scottish art because there’s no agreement on what ‘Scottish’ means. Are these artists just good examples of quality, or do they create something exquisitely different that cannot be found anywhere else? Is ‘Scottishness’ an essential characteristic to be measured against ‘Italianness’, ‘Somalianness’ or ‘Englishness’? How Scottish am I compared to you? Are the Scottish Tories distinctively different from other Tories?
Questions like these underline the flexibility of the term. When Scottish means an ethnic group, then that identity can only be loosely defined and will be consistently contested. It cannot be a reasonable benchmark to evaluate anything, including art, against.
Yet, there is one aspect of ‘Scottishness’ that is distinct, that is different from any other ‘ishness’ on the planet….the place, the territory that we currently call ‘Scotland’. This place provides the context that any artist who works here shares, even if they live in different centuries.
William McTaggart. 1890. The Storm. Oil on canvas. 122.00 x 183.00 cm. National Galleries Scotland.
The definitive criterion of Scottishness is the presence and influence of Scotland itself – the land, its spaces, places, locations and peoples. This influences what anybody does here in this place, irrespective of where they were born or who their parents were.
William Crosbie. 1944. Cessnock in Summer. Watercolour. 47.6 x 66 cm. Private owner.
Cessnock in Summer depicts an industrial landscape in the burgh of Govan. Big ships were built there, goods traded across the Atlantic. The colours are pale, bright enough but hemmed in by upright shapes and blocks of black. The human figures cluster at the bottom right, their space invaded by the sea. This is a painting with social and political meanings, related specifically to a Scottish place.
When Scotland’s society and/or politics is noticeably distinctive then it causes friction with other British people. Murray Pittock tracked this by analysing the perception of Scottishness by media in England, post-1707. His article is fascinating (link below). He concluded that negative stereotyping waxed when the Scots were noticeably different, waned when they were not. Any Scottish behaviour thought to challenge or take advantage of existing arrangements was met with an outbreak of complaint that contrasted English virtues with Scottish vices. This perhaps explains why modern British red-top newspapers and right-wing politicians are so forthright about characterising anti-Brexit Scots as parasites and subsidy junkies. At the election in December 2019, 74.9% Scots voters did not support the current UK government.
The sea has been conceptualised in the western psyche, through myth, literature and art, as formless, wild and dangerous, romantically sublime. Yet this featureless void doesn’t resonate with people who live near the sea, as many people in Scotland do.
Our experiences of the sea are much more nuanced. I know how the little cold waves on Ayr’s flat sandy beach feel to a 4 year-old boy. I can still match my teenage fear of balancing up high with the thump of cold murky water on my chest after I’d jumped into a harbour from the pier. There are sharp sensory memories of being on the sea in a sailing dingy: sounds heard- the slap-slap of water against the hull, the deep creaking flap of sails, a tiller that thrums; odours smelled and movements felt. There are other memories of being ejected from the boat, flying and falling into cold deep water. Such experiences shape our consciousness and influence future behaviours.
I remember how the light winds of summer and the arctic blow of a winter storm felt decades ago on the West sands at St. Andrew’s, where I stood many times and faced the tide. Those experiences resurface whenever I hear the opening soundtrack of ‘Chariots of Fire‘.
Here are seven paintings of those West sands, ostensibly of the ‘same place’ (found through Google images). The last two though communicate more to me than the first five. Interesting that none of the artists has depicted a human being, and only some have included the town.
