Artist Janette Kerr currently has an online exhibition called State of the Sea. It’s well worth a visit and will encourage much contemplation.
Her work is powerful and very evocative of wild water, raucous waves, wind-slapping cagoule and the emotions of being at the edge, the Northern edge. She writes that ‘My paintings represent immediate responses to sound and silences within the landscape around me; they are about movement and the rhythms of sea and wind, swelling and breaking waves, the merging of spray with air, advancing rain and mist, glancing sunlight – elements that seem to be about something intangible.’.
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.
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.
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.
Imagine, if you will, what kind of day Joan Eardley had as she stood on the foreshore painting this picture of the sea-foam at Catterline, a coastal village on the North Sea in Scotland.
Eardley, Joan Kathleen Harding; Flood Tide; East Dunbartonshire Council.
An artist’s sensory experiences (of the sound of the water, the touch of the wind, the smell of seaweed and brine, the grind of sand on the skin) must surely, like everyone else’s sensory experiences, be incorporated into what they feel and do, into their way of being in the world. The resultant painting then comes full circle, because it in turn influences everyone who looks at the picture. Each viewer thinks about this portrait of the sea, incorporates something of what the artist has left there and carries around a new perspective, even when they themselves go to the sea in the future.
It is no surprise that many visit Catterline to ‘see’ what Eardley saw, to compare the painted place with the ‘real’ place. This small thought experiment begs the question: how do people experience the Scottish sea and what has it added to their sense of self?
Eardley at Catterline. Photograph by Audrey Walker, 1950s
Lil Neilson was from Fife and trained at Dundee Art School. She lived for a period in Catterline, spending much time with her friend and mentor Joan Eardley.
The subject of this painting, Todhead Lighthouse, is a specific place south of Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire. The lighthouse was designed by David Stephenson. The brushwork is a swirling churning movement in blue, a contrast to her later works which with an extended lighter palette require the viewer to do more thinking.
This one, for example, has the intriguing title of ‘Woman Unknown to Herself‘. It seems to echo the sea but what else is hidden in there?
This painting is by an artist who is based in Southern California on the San Diego coast. Though her comments (below) could be spoken by an artist on the Fife coast, would Scotland’s seas ever be depicted in a painting like “Incoming Tides”?
Sherry Krulle-Beaton: “I have always lived within a relatively short distance from the sea. What captivates me as an artist is the sea presents me with all the examples and principles of design. At the same time doing so with a mood changing spectrum such as crashing of thunderous waves to the soft roll of sand pebbles rushing back toward the sea. Living in a coastal community has made me more aware of how the ebb and flow, motion and moods of the ocean can influence my art.”
John McGhie. The Fisher Lass. c1914. Oil on canvas. 100 x 121.5 cm.
The Fisher Lass portrays a sublime, stormy sea in the background, a socially realistic young woman with a basket of slippery fish in the foreground. She is placed parallel to the waves, dark head receding into pale surrounding highlights, crowned by wheeling gulls. Her contour is fatigued and buffeted by the wind, as are the gulls and the flapping fabrics. The light and shadow, sombre colours and the fine even brushwork create a realistic portrait of a solid person at work in a specific, albeit romanticised, environment. The viewer feels that this person is real and may even peer at her face. Indeed, this was Jessie Hughes of Pittenweem, born in 1892 and hence around 22 years of age when she was painted. She lived in the house nearest the sea. John McGhie (1857 – 1952), the artist, trained in Scotland, England, France and Italy, and eventually settled in Fife. He favoured the ‘plein aire’ approach to capturing landscapes and people at work.
The Scottish Fisheries museum is located next to the harbour in Anstruther, Fife. It holds a varied collection of paintings of Scotland’s seas and many are on permanent display.
‘Situated in a wonderful collection of historic buildings on the harbour of a small and beautiful fishing port, we are a charitable trust which has become a national institution with an international reputation.
Our principal aim, in all of our efforts with regard to the displays in our extensive museum and our many educational and research activities, is to excite informed interest in the development of the Scottish commercial fishing industry among people of all ages in and beyond Scotland. The core story that we have to tell is the history of how, through a constant process of innovation, the Scottish fisheries became such an important part of the lives of so many Scots.’
