A print of this picture, cut from a magazine, is amongst the papers in Canna House. It clearly depicts several of the island landmarks and people going about island activities – farming, lobster fishing, sunbathing. Only the man with the gun is incongruous,since John and Margaret Campbell did not allow shooting (although John sometimes turned a blind eye to the shooting of rabbits, or hooded crows during lambing).
It puzzled me because I was told it was by Stanley Spencer. The style does look Spencer-like, but try as I might, I could not find anything in the catalogues of Spencer’s work, nor any reference of him having visited Canna. Then just before my book was about to go to press, Magda Sagarzarzu, the archivist of Canna House, told me that it was by Spencer, not the famous Stanley but his younger brother Gilbert. I had enough time to change the name, but not enough to find out more.
Now I have discovered that Gilbert Spencer had met John in Oxford in the 1930s, when the artist was painting murals for Balliol College and John must have been doing his post-graduate work. Spencer visited Canna in 1947, just before taking up the post of head of painting at Glasgow School of Art. He stayed with John and Margaret (whom he called “Meg”), but although he made sketches, was not happy with what he had produced. This picture must have been the one he describes in his book Memoirs of a Painter as having been produced later. He did not like it and kept it under a wrap in his studio. I should love to know where it is now.
While he was on the island Margaret persuaded him to visit one of the old women to draw her. She had put on her Sunday best, but he noticed her bed bundled up in the corner of the room. When he had finished she pressed a few pennies into his hand. Despite what Spencer says were his anti-Catholic views, he put them in the offertory box in the Catholic Chapel as he walked back. Unfortunately he does not name her in the book and on the picture she is described only as “a Hebridean,” although it is signed and dated 1947.
big tam connery says:
Fashcinating shtory – i never knew Shtanley Shpensher had a brother, let alone one that could pain in shimilar shtyle! Would make a great pieshe for an artsh prog like The Culture Show, no?
1 February, 2011 — 11:49 am
big tam connery says:
and by the way, apologiesh for ‘my’ shpelling – it’s the shpeech recognishion shoftware..
1 February, 2011 — 12:23 pm
Ray says:
Hello Big Tam, nice to meet you on the blog as well as on Twitter – Culture Show a great idea! It would certainly be good to find out what happened to Gilbert’s picture. (Maybe you can get Gaelic speech recognition software?)
1 February, 2011 — 5:33 pm
Sally Foster says:
See the following link for 1951 exhibition as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations: http://www.fulltable.com/vts/f/fbt/pa.htm
1 August, 2011 — 12:09 pm