Frederick William MacMonnies - a son of Whithorn

William MacMonnies was a native of Whithorn. He emigrated to the United States and made a fortune in the grain business which he lost during the civil war. William married Juliana Eudora West, who was a relation of Benjamin West the history painter and President of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Their son, born in 1865, was Frederick William MacMonnies who became a member of the great trio of late 19th century American sculptors with Daniel Chester French and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Indeed, it was the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens which Frederick entered as an apprentice in 1880. Four years later he left for Paris to study sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts, winning the highest award given to foreign students twice. This encouraged him to open a studio in Paris where he began to create some of his most famous sculptures which he submitted annually to the Paris Salon. In Paris, he married a fellow American artist, Mary Louise Fairchild.

In 1889 he was awarded an Honourable Mention at the Salon for his Diana and this led to important American commissions, including the Nathan Hale memorial (above) and the decorative Pan fountain sculpture (below) for "Rohallion" the New Jersey mansion of banker Edward Adams, who opened for him a social circle of art-appreciating New Yorkers.

Until the outbreak of World War I, when he gave up his grand household establishment in Paris, Macmonnies travelled annually to the United States to see dealers and patrons, returning to Paris to work on his commissions.

In 1891 he was awarded the commission for the centerpiece of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The sculture of Columbia in her Grand Barge of State, in the vast central fountain of the Court of Honour, was truly the iconic figure at the heart of the American Beaux-Arts movement. This large decorative fountain became the focal point at the Exposition and established MacMonnies as one of the important sculptors of the time.

As their fortunes improved, Frederick and Mary MacMonnies moved to Giverny, a few miles from Paris and a budding artists’ colony established by Claude Monet.

Claude Monet, Poppy Field at Giverny, 1885, oil on canvas 60 x 73 cm

In fact MacMonnies became an intimate friend of Monet, in part through his long residency in the village. Frederick and Mary rented various villas before finally converting and settling in Le Mourier, ironically with his father’s connection with Whithorn, this was the village priory! There they became known to their friends as ‘the MacMonastery’. In the grounds of their house they developed a formal terraced garden which, some argued, came to rival Monet’s own. MacMonnies worked on his sculpture in a barn in the gardens, when not at his studio in Paris, while Mary worked in a studio inside the house, which also doubled as their daughters Berthe’s nursery.

Mary MacMonnies, Baby Berthe in Highchair with Toys, 1898

Mary MacMonnies, Dans la Nursery (Painting Atelier at Giverny), 1898

They had three children: Berthe (1895), Marjorie (1897), and Ronald (1899), who died of meningitis two years later. The couple were divorced in 1908, and he married his former student Alice Jones in 1910.

Louise Mary Kamp, Frederick MacMonnies in his Studio, 1908

MacMonnies lived out most of his life as an expatriate in France, had only one solo exhibition during his life, and died of pneumonia in relative obscurity in 1937.

Frederick MacMonnies, Self Portrait, 1896

Further details of his life are on this site:

http://brooklynbeforenow.blogspot.com/2010/10/thank-you-frederick-macmonnies.html

Oskar Kokoschka and "Doris and the Cat"

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), was one of the greatest figurative painters of the twentieth century.

During the Second World War Oskar Kokoschka and his wife Olda were emigrants in Britain. From 1941 to 1945 the couple spent several weeks each summer in the Machars of Galloway as guests of the wealthy industrialist Emil Korner. Kokoschka had been friendly with the Korner family since his young days in Vienna and his stays at the House of Elrig, a few miles from Whithorn, were times of untroubled artistic productivity.

In August and September 1945, he painted a series of watercolours showing Doris with a cat on her lap. Doris was a young relative of the host who spent her summer holidays at Elrig. “She was always pleased when she could get out of the housework by modelling with the cat for Kokoschka. Her task was to hold onto the cat who was always trying to bolt", Olda Kokoschka recalled in 1991.

The great fascination which the subject 'girl with cat' held for Kokoschka is shown in the way that he use these sketches for his last oil painting of 1973–76.

Hew Lorimer's sculpture in Whithorn

Hew Lorimer (1907 – 1993) is one of Scotland's best-known sculptors though his work at Whithorn is often overlooked. The creator of some of the most prominent large-scale work of the second half of the twentieth century, in June of 1993 he received a papal knighthood in recognition of his sculptures for the Church.

Awarded the OBE in 1986 for services to architecture and conservation, he had been made an honorary Doctor of Laws at Dundee University three years earlier. One of his major works is the relief panel of the saint on St Francis' Church in Dundee, completed in the 1940s, and in 1986 he completed a crucifixion for the university chapel, one of his last works.

Other famous works include the seven allegorical figures which decorate the facade of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, sculpted in their places over three years in the early 1950s. During the same period he completed the 27ft Our Lady of the Isles on South Uist in partnership with Maxwell Allan.

The Whithorn Crucifix was sculpted in 1959and is sited above the Pilgrimage Altar at the rear of the Roman Catholic Church to SS. Ninian, Martin and John on George Street. The figure of Christ looks out over open fields to the Solway Firth. Sadly it has not weathered well and poor stone cleaning in 1997 has added to the loss of some detail. Despite this the crucifix retains a strong emotional power. Hew Lorimer had completed a similar firure, the sculpture of Christ the King, for the Dawson mausoleum and Chapel in St Ninian's Burial Ground, Fochabers.

Born in Edinburgh, son of the distinguished architect Sir Robert Lorimer, Hew Lorimer was educated at Loretto School and Edinburgh College of Art. After graduating in 1934, he entered an apprenticeship with the sculptor Eric Gill in London. Following the Second World War he restored Kellie Castle, Pittenweem, Fife, which his family had occupied for more than a century, living there with his family until his wife's death in 1970.

Until his retirement Hew Lorimer remained as custodian of the castle, which came into the care of the National Trust for Scotland. He was Fife representative of the trust for many years and originated the Little Houses Scheme which saw the trust extending its preservation work to smaller homes, one of which was the Pend House in Whithorn. In 2009, due to funding difficulties, the National Trust for Scotland closed Kellie Castle to the public.


Sir Robert Lorimer, Hew’s father, carried out alterations to Galloway House creating an opulent entrance hall and adding extensions to the exterior in 1909.

Whithorn Library

Whithorn Library, opened in 1911, was designed by the Newton Stewart architect, Alexander Young. The front elevation, in an Arts and Crafts style, is rendered in drydash with terra-cotta brick facings, brick detailing in blue and with a cast concrete door lintel carrying the date and name.

The idea of founding a library for Whithorn appears to have begun in 1896 chiefly through the work of Alex MacFie and J.J. Colquhoun with the backing of Charles Hawthorn, the Provost at the time. A public meeting in October that year unanimously backed the proposal and a committee was elected with McFie as chairman and Colquhoun as secretary. A number of women present offered to collect subscriptions and were so successful that as library was opened two months later in the side-rooms of the New Town Hall, with over 200 books and 100 members.

A further 100 books were added each year and the Ferguson Bequest contributed further volumes. By the end of 1905 space was becoming a problem and the committee approached the family of the late Charles Lockhart of Pittsburgh. He had been a native of Whithorn and made his fortune as one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company which later became Esso. The family agreed to subscribe £300 on condition that a further £200 was raised from another source. A weekend bazaar was held in the New Town Hall on August 1907 and over £300 was raised. However, no suitable premises could be found in Whithorn at the time and the committee decided to temporary re-locate the library to the larger ‘supper-room’ at the rear of the Town Hall.

 Mr Johnston-Stewart, local landowner of Glasserton Estate , offered the site of a old building opposite the Town Hall in St John Street where the present library now stands. It was Mrs Johnston-Stewart who opened the Library on 29th November, 1911. She was presented with a gold key inscribed with the date and her name as a souvenir of the occasion.

When the building opened it had 2,200 books, with space for 800 more, a reading room and a recreation room to the rear. As recreation, 2 billiard tables were installed. One, a full-sized Burroughs and Watt’s table gifted by Rear-Admiral Johnston-Stewart, and the other, a smaller Ashcroft table. At the back of the recreation area was a raised dais for card tables.

The building re-opened in 1995 after extensive refurbishment but the façade, that featured in the film ‘The Wicker Man', was left virtually intact with the exception of a recently added wheelchair ramp. The Library appeared as Summerisle Library in the movie. The exterior shot also showed the children of Summerisle chanting, 'We carry death out of the village'!

Modern Dance from Whithorn

“There has yet to be a comprehensive survey of modern British dance as a continuing tradition…The result of this neglect could be interpreted that there was ‘nothing going on’ in modern dance in Britain before the importation of the Graham* technique from America in the 1960s.”
 “Free dancers at the turn of the twentieth-century such as Isadora Duncan and Maud Allan* generated a British movement of “Helenic” dancers among whom Margaret Morris was the most radical”

(Larraine Nicholas, Dancing in the Margins, from Rethinking Dance History: A Reader, ed. Alexandra Carter, London: Routledge, 2004)

Celtic Ballet

One dancer who played a very active part in the development of modern dance came from the Machars of Galloway. Ronnie Curran grew up at Monrieth, a few miles from Whithorn. Taking dance classes locally, his abilities were clear from a very early age. When he was 11, Ronnie was seen by the Countess of Galloway who also recognised his talent and later supported his training; first in Glasgow under Margaret Morris with Celtic Ballet, then in Manchester with Lisa Ullmann, Sylvia B. Bodmer and Rudolph Laban, “the father of modern dance”. Ronnie later studied with Hans Zullig at the Folkwang School, Essen , Germany.

In 1950, at the age of 20, Ronnie was approached by Sadler’s Wells Ballet but he turned down the offer in order to be one of the founding members of the British Dance Theatre Company. At the time Ronnie said, “The work I am doing is very different from the classical and I do not aim to be a classical dancer. I do not want to have any specific style… My plans are to work with this company and see it grow. I hope it will become a huge organisation and I would like very much to be there to help.”

British Dance Theatre started from the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester but it rehearsed for its first 1951 tour in the hall in Monrieth and went on to perform in Kilmarnock, Newton Stewart, Stranraer and Kirkcudbright. In Newton Stewart, “the audience loved Ronnie, for they saw in him a future star of the ballet, but they also fell in love with the whole Company’s performance.” (Galloway Gazette, June 1951) Dancing barefoot with Ronnie were Sally Archbutt, Allison Buchan, Margaret Fox, Sheila Urquart, Julia Mason and Warren Lamb. They performed 7 pieces, danced to a diverse range of music from Grieg to the South American compositions of Lecuona and Barroso and the blues of Duke Ellington. The pieces took daring contemporary themes such as the guerrilla leader tortured by a prison warder in “And Tomorrow Comes”, the sadness of a childless couple in “Born of Desire” and, in contrast, a lighter, joyful dance in “Bobbysoxers”.
Although first associated with ballet and modern dance in Scotland, Ronnie Curran went on to perform hundreds of dance numbers for television but it was in the satirical revue "For Amusement Only", which played for three years in London's West End, which established him.

Ronnie also appeared in feature films including "I Gotta Horse", "Masque of the Red Death", one of the best horror films ever made, and "Shot in the Dark", possibly the best of the Pink Panther films. For a time he was a visiting lecturer in Further Education working with PE teachers and, at Bromley College, training student TV cameramen. Ronnie was a founder member and principal dancer with West Country Ballet performing to great reviews at the Edinburgh Festival in the early 1960’s. This ballet company, under the directorship of Peter Darrell, later formed the nucleolus of Scottish Ballet.

This year as Scottish Ballet proudly celebrates its 40th anniversary, it is a great pity that the often groundbreaking achievements of dancers like Ronnie Curran have been overshadowed by later events and personalities. Indeed, the concept of taking popular music and dancing to contemporary themes, exhibited, for example, in the recent ballets by Michael Clark at this years Edinburgh Festival, were being put into practice by Ronnie Curran and others at Monrieth and Newton Stewart almost 60 years ago!


* Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan and Maud Allen were all of Scottish descent.

The Oldest Living Thing in Whithorn

Viewing Whithorn in the Google satellite photograph, and in the aerial photograph below, the great domed canopy of the massive beech tree, that grows on the back dyke of the Old Town Hall, stands out.

This beautiful tree has been the climbing frame for many a Whithorn child who carved their initials, sometimes intertwined with their first love, high into its branches. It is difficult to age but perhaps the tree dates from the building of the replacement clock tower in the early 18th Century.

Certainly at that time the pursuit of tree planting was being enthusiastically undertaken in the surrounding countryside according to the report in the First Statistical Account Of Scotland, written 1791-1799. “The face of the country is improving daily, not only by the cultivation bestowed up the land, but by a passion for planting which shows itself among the landowners. From the subterraneous timbers, found in all the mosses, it appears that this peninsula had once been well clothed with Oaks, Firs, Etc. It was afterwards rendered perfectly bare, of every tree and shrub."

"About the year 1722, William Agnew late of Castlewigg, began to plant upon his estate, and may be considered as the father of this important species of this improvement in this neighborhood. His nephew Hugh Hathorne, Esq. Succeeded him, and planted with great spirit and success; so that now, every species of Oak, Ask, Beech, and Fir, are in great perfection in the forest; and these with single rows, verges and clumps, have a very happy effect upon the appearance of the country. The beeches upon this estate are of very large girth, and great height.”

Whithorn's Burgh Surveyed

In 2008 a Burgh Survey was undertaken by Historic Scotland. Working with them, Charles McKean suggested some features in the evolution of the Scottish town, quite distinct from English developments, and looked in particular at this evolution in Whithorn and Tain.

A royal burgh under the control of the prior of Whithorn, and he exerted considerable power as “Whithorn Priory was one of the largest in Scotland”, was erected in 1325. The original layout survives to this day. Whithorn is, “sheltered in a fold in the plateau of southern Galloway, not far from the tip of the peninsular, the town comprises an exceptionally elongated market place – over spacious and attenuated even by David 1st burgh standard. It is narrow at the top by the High or Isle Port Mouth, and at the northern end by Low Port Mouth”. These entry ports offered protection but there is no indication that the town was ever fortified or needed to be. Behind the buildings fronting the market place were long rigs ending in back dykes.

The survey concluded that this “strangely over-ambitious and potentially windswept market place”, that is now George Street, had once been divided, and functioned in three distinct ways. The elements which divided it have now been removed. The Ket Burn, which once flowed openly and was crossed by a timber bridge, has now been piped below street level.

To the south, in the centre of the street just opposite the Roman Catholic Church, once stood the tolbooth. General Roy’s map (above) of 1747 shows a large square building at this point in George Street,described by Bishop Pococke as a “market house….adorned with spire and turrets and prouded with bells”.

To the north, the space between the Ket Burn and the Low Port Mouth, was a sheltered space were travellers from the north would have arrived, indeed it once had at least 3 inns.

To the south, above the site of the tolbooth, the houses on the south-west side still retain there forelands. “The urban form of this section may be the result of this open space being used as a gathering point for pilgrims prior to their formal entry to the priory and the shrine of St. Ninian.”

“Between the Ket and the tolbooth was Whithorn’s principal ceremonial space.” It was once dominated by the mass of the priory with its tower that, “scaled up from the surviving ruins, was likely to be a minimum of forty metres high”, somewhat higher than the Old Town Hall steeple. This area was the town’s market place with the market cross, and the priory gatehouse. Another approach, by a road to the south (King’s Road) brought travellers arriving by sea at the town’s harbour at the Isle.

The survey concludes, “Whithorn is a re-occupied pilgrimage destination of high quality, whose forms and rigs survive with a certain quantity of ancient fabric embedded in re-edified properties. Yet the pilgrimage routes are neither clear nor fully open and since so little is made of the priory church, the ensemble makes little sense at present. The space dividers that used to shape George Street (the tollbooth and the Ket Burn) have been removed or disguised. There is, however, enormous charm in the way that the town folds into the country and its boundaries are still delineated by back dykes to the long rigs.”

Charles McKean proposes that, “with the enormous revival in Europe of pilgrimage to Santiago della Compostella extending as far north as Trondheim. By re-opening the pilgrimage route to the Isle, re-excavating the priory church and representing it so that its scale might again be appreciated, Whithorn could retrieve its part in that European-wide movement.”

The Gold Torque

The Gold Torque by Andrew McMormick, with wood-engravings by Agnes Miller Parker and a foreword by Philippa, Countess of Galloway, was publish by William MacLellan, Glasgow, in 1951.

The story of the Gold Toque follows the move from pagan to Christian beliefs by a tribe settled in the ancient Forest of Galloway.

Cairnsmore

Princess Efta, Prince Ruari, Saint Ninian and the Bridal Stane

The author, Andrew McCormick was the Provost of Newton Stewart and a local solicitor. He recorded many aspects of gypsy life in Galloway and for part of his life lived and wrote in a hut in the woods at Minnigaff where much of the Gold Torque is set.

The Discerning Squirrels

The illustrator, Agnes Miller Parker (1895-1980), was born in Irvine and educated at the Glasgow School of Art. She dedicated her career to book illustration and printmaking, becoming one of Britain's foremost wood engravers. Parker married a fellow student from Glasgow, William McCance the Scottish painter and sculptor in 1918. Working for a time with the Gregynog Press and living in England for most of her life, she returned in the 1950’s to Lamlash. Many of Parker's personal papers, including letters, sketches and proofs for illustrations, are held today by the Manuscripts Division of the National Library of Scotland.

The Pigot and Slater Commercial Directories of Whithorn

The 19th Century Commercial Directories of Pigot and Slater provide an unrivalled economic and social snapshot of Scottish communities.

Here are three entries for Whithorn that list the trades and professions of the town. The first is from Pigot & Co's National Commercial Directory of the Whole of Scotland of 1825.

Below, taken from Pigot & Co's Directory of 1837.

Finally, from Slater's Directory of 1852.

The illustrations are from An Alphabet by William Nicholson, 1898.