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signed l.l.: John Duncan

tempera on board

CATALOGUE NOTE

Duncan probably first visited Iona around the turn of the twentieth century and continued to visit the island for more than forty years. It is possible that he accompanied the botanist and author William Sharp (who wrote under the name Fiona Macleod) on one of his explorations in the 1890s and was certainly on Iona as early as September 1903. Landscapes and costal views of Iona appear in many of Duncan's most famous works. When Duncan painted his St Bride in 1913, he depicted Christ's midwife bourn aloft by angels flying past the island of Iona with the Cathedral visible on the skyline (this building was actually constructed 1200 years after the birth of Christ). The island is also visible in two versions of St Columba Bidding Farewell to the White Horse, one of which exhibited in 1925. Duncan told a friend that it was Iona that he believed he had first heard the voices and music of the na sìthichean, the Gaelic fairy spirits, that he painted in his wonderful The Riders of the Sidh. His belief in the mythology of the islands is laced through the tapestry of his evocative symbolist works whilst the coastal landscapes show his love for the rugged beauty of the island.

The present view was painted after 1913 when Duncan had adopted the medium of tempera for his Iona landscapes, often working in his studio from watercolours painted on the spot. Usually small in scale, these pictures bear comparison with the colour studies painted by Cadell and Peploe on the same beaches.