There are many art historians who champion a focus on a single painting. Jane Adamson wrote about Alberto Morrocco’s The Way of The Cross in Issue 2. There has been less attention to single subjects, but Jane loves looking at things afresh, and here she is, opening her window on Scottish art history to see how St Monans and its Church have been tackled by a dozen artists, through the age when the village was connected to the wider world by train.

‘Naturally I thought I was in heaven and that paradise would have no ending… I knew that Eden was almost over… the last steam drifter left the East Neuk for the East Anglian fishing grounds in 1956…’

Christopher Rush in “Where The Clock Stands Still: The East Neuk of Fife’ (1990)

St Monans Church is one of the landmarks of the Firth of Forth, on that part of the Fife shore called the East Neuk. It sits perched above the fishing village that shares its name. Its position is outside the village: a squat crossing tower topped by a stone spire, flanked by short walls; a square, rectangle and cone as if built by a child and hammered into the rocks. It is a highly distinctive silhouette.

Named after a local saint, the church buildings enjoyed royal patronage and were initially paid for by David II in 1362-70, who endowed it as a chapel. James III transferred it to the Dominicans in 1471, until it became, post-Reformation, a parish church. By the late 1700s it was ruinous until William Burn’s major restoration in 1826-1828.

St Monans Church, 2023.

Dramatically close to the shore, it claims to be the closest church to the sea in Scotland. John Gifford called it ‘memorably haunting in its clifftop churchyard’. A romantic spot, it is little wonder that artists were drawn to it.

The village has been much depicted, so where to begin with my choice of images? My key criteria was that the Church had to feature. St Monans was called ‘The Holy City’ in the East Neuk on account of the Old Kirk. St Monans has had several churches, but none so remarkable as this hilltop spot. And in no small way, Christopher Rush’s book ‘Hellfire and Herring: A Childhood Remembered’ (2007) played a part. It’s about his childhood growing up in St Monans, explaining a village where religion and fish were intertwined.

‘You could smell God on the air in St Monans as surely as you could smell herring”.

But where to start and finish? How about 1860 to 1961: approximately one hundred years, a period that covered the coming of the railway to the coast in 1863, to just before its closure in 1966: time before the Forth Road Bridge (1964) and the demise of the fishing in Fife. It was also a time of sail, giving way to steam, then diesel; and of close knit fishing communities.  Many artists holidayed here: drawing, painting, and etching in this one location, depicting this one subject. I liked the idea of how they interpreted the same theme: a church, in a village, on the coast.

The period covers the Victorian Industrial Revolution when Glasgow was the moneyed Second City of the Empire, and Edinburgh was called Auld Reekie for its blacking coal fires, through two World Wars, to the following peace and Dr Beeching cuts to the railway.

I am beginning with a work that has been given a new lease of life in the heart of the capital, Edinburgh. A small painting by Alexander Ignatius Roche (1861-1921) has been brought out of storage to be hung significantly in the new extension of the National Gallery. Surrounded as it is by other larger more famous pieces, in the corner of Gallery 6 (‘The Glasgow Boys’), you might miss it, but take a closer look, for of all paintings I will discuss, it is currently the only one on public display in Scotland.

Alexander Ignatius Roche (1861 – 1921), Afternoon Sunshine, St Monans, oil on panel, 26.7 x 35cm, 1892, collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

It is a dreamy scene, echoing the idyll of Christopher Rush’s childhood home, and was probably painted en plein air. Roche had spent the summer of 1892 sketching and painting along the Fife Coast. A summer haze hangs over the water. It is a rural scene with two figures bent on their task of walking up the slope, ignoring the large building in the distance. It is St Monans Church with a profile that marks out the village as clearly, the fishermen would tell you, as the Castle marks Edinburgh.

Roche was one of The Glasgow Boys, the group of painters who between the 1880s and 1890s were depicting rural everyday scenes around Scotland – and France. Influenced by the French Social realists and Impressionists, Roche trained in both Glasgow and Paris.

It has the charm of a captured moment: church, sea, steep slope, weary figures climbing upwards, all in a few brushstrokes, and if it were not for the distinctive shape of the church, I would have said this was a northern French summer scene.

It was bequeathed to National Galleries of Scotland by Sir James and Lady Caw. Sir James had been director of the National Gallery Scotland, had written the first book about Scottish Art, and was the son-in-law of Sir William McTaggart. With its elaborate gilt frame, I can visualise this hanging in the Caw’s Lasswade home.

Charles Lees (1800 – 1880), St Monans, oil on canvas, 72.3 x 123.2cm, courtesy of The University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums; received from St Monans Town Hall, 1975.

In this work, the church is central but distant. It is not dated, but it is by Charles Lees: a documentary piece. A landscape and portrait artist, Lees is best known for his sporting scenes. His 1847 painting of a St Andrews golf match, copies of which are hung in golf clubs around the world, is his most famous work, where he meticulously records all the entrants. Here is an equally precise record of the harbour at work. The focus is on the fishermen tending nets, a woman and child watching, their clinker boats behind, and the tower and spire of the church in the background.

Born in Cupar, he had a studio in Edinburgh. Given the work involved on a subject outside his usual genre, I am assuming that this was commissioned, perhaps by the Town Hall where it hung until the mid-1970s? Who would have the money for the commission? Miller’s the boat builders? The view taken is from their yard. It’s a mystery to be solved.

The next painting could not be more different. A few decades later, it is smaller in scale and fluidly captured; a small oil on canvas sketch, painted outdoors.

Charles Hodge Mackie (1862 – 1920), St Monans, oil on canvas. 34.3 x 43.8cm, 1898, collection of the City Art Centre, Edinburgh

Roche chose summer to paint the church, Mackie has chosen winter, but has taken a similar view. Mackie had studied at the Royal Scottish Academy under Sir William McTaggart and like Roche had gone to France. Mackie and his wife had honeymooned there in 1892, where they met Paul Serusier. Thanks to his introduction, they visited Paul Gauguin’s studio in 1894.  

Serusier and Gauguin were associated with the Pont-Aven School along the coast of Brittany. From the 1850s Parisian painters began to frequent the area, wanting to spend their summers away from the city, in a low budget picturesque spot not yet spoilt by tourism. 

Were the Fife fishing villages of The East Neuk not the equivalents for the Edinburgh or Glasgow painters of the French coastal towns that attracted Parisian artists? Along the Brittany coast, Pont-Aven was easier to access after the opening of the railway in the 1860s. In Fife, the Leven and East Fife Railway opened to St Monans in 1863, and in 1890 the Forth Bridge was completed.

The railway came and so did the artists.

A.C.W. Duncan (1883 or 1884 – 1932), St Monans, 60.5 x 74cm, 1919, courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums.

I was most curious to see this painting, for on screen it felt like a photograph. Alexander C.W. Duncan was a Glasgow landscape and figurative painter, who also painted the inland village of Kilconquhar a few miles away. Was he there on holiday? It certainly has a holiday feel, like a postcard image you would send home to Mum.

Curiously it is the only painting to emphasise the grain fields of this fertile coast that physically separate the East Neuk villages from one another: the legendary ‘Fringe of Gold’. Until recently these were unfenced fields, the yellow corn or barley brushing along the coastal road lined with red poppies; a swathe of gold, sloping down to the blue Forth. This is the view from the Elie Road. Did Duncan stay in Elie or Earlsferry, where hotels and guest houses proliferated and provided for the holidaymaker with its beach, golf and pleasure sailing in the harbour? Only a few miles separate these villages and St Monans, but they were worlds apart. We are outsiders looking on. The church will give us entry, but will the village?

The First World War had ended less than year before, but you would not know from this scene: life is positive, sunny even.  The painting currently hangs in a St Andrews University lecturer’s office. It has pride of place above her desk. She chose it from the University’s art collection as she was married in the church and it has happy associations. Only the dark harbour masts and the red sails of the Fifie fishing boats date it.

Dreamy as it might seem, this is a realistic depiction of mid-summer. The give-away? The slight glaze to the picture, as if seen through a muslin screen. Duncan has captured the haar (that summer fog of the Forth) being beaten away as the sun comes through.

Sunny holidays, calm days at sea, the haar lifting. With the war still fresh in the country’s mind perhaps that is why Duncan chose to (almost) hide the graveyard.

Hope and colour are the future, for the holiday maker at least.

George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931) St Monans, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, probably 1922-3, private collection.

No one captures this better than Hunter, for is this Fife, or Provence?

Hunter was one of the four Scottish Colourists and the only one not born in Edinburgh. He was a West Coast man, from Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. As a child his family moved to California to establish an orange farm and throughout his early years as a painter he travelled back and forth to San Francisco. As with all the colourists he was influenced by France. Not just Paris but the south of France: ‘it injected a light airiness into his landscapes’ (Philip Long, Scottish Colourists 1900-1930)

I’ve only seen this picture on the web and am assuming it will be in a private collection, but I wanted to show another painting taken from a similar view to the last one, but with a less realistic style. If Duncan has given us a picture of the village, down to the texture and colour of the church walls, Hunter has given us an idea. Looking back to the earlier paintings of Roche and Mackie who both painted a northern Breton light, thirty years later Hunter imbued St Monans with the Mediterranean.

He is recorded as painting in Fife in 1922-23, hence my estimation of when this was painted. In the same years he was also in Paris, Venice, Florence and Italy. He exhibited in Glasgow with Alexander Reid, the art dealer who in 1921 showed work by Matisse, Picasso, Vuillard, Dufy and Rouault. Hunter was particularly influenced by Matisse.

In his book ‘Scottish Colourists 1900–1930’ Philip Long aptly puts it: ‘without their French contacts and experience, none of the Scottish Colourists would have developed their art as we know it.’

My final choices are etchings, paintings and watercolours by six artists some of whom were firm friends. William Wilson, Ian Cheyne, John Guthrie Spence Smith, Sir William Gillies, Ann Redpath and Ian Fleming.

From colour we go to an engraving and wood block print, to shades of grey.

William Wilson (1905 -1972), St Monance, engraving 15.2 x 19 cm, 1929, collection of the National Galleries Scotland: Courtesy of the Blackadder Houston Trust

In contrast to Hunter’s vibrant warmth in oils, a few years later Wilson defines the church’s hilltop position, its rocky shore and closeness to the sea in sombre Scottish line. The only indication that this might be a fishing village is the single clinkered boat on the right-hand side. Wilson draws our eye through the composition: fissured rocks drawing the eye upwards to the east coast architecture of pantiles, crow stepped gables, dormers and outside stairs.

Born in Edinburgh, Wilson trained as a stained glass artist, but his etching talent was spotted as a 15 year old apprentice studying part-time printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art. He went on to enrol as a full-time student.

In the 1920s printmaking was falling out of fashion, but there were talented contemporary Scottish printmakers, James McIntosh Patrick and Ian Fleming amongst them. Both were also painters and the latter was a lifelong friend and confidante to Wilson.

There is an element in his use of shading here that reminds me of the Scottish caricaturist John Kay. A cool detachment, observing his subject, just as Kay has left us with a unique record of Edinburgh life in the late eighteenth century, this is a similar record of St Monans: an architectural stage set.

Ian Cheyne (1895 – 1955), The Fisherman’s Church, woodcut, 25.5 x 26.7cm, 1930, collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

Ian Cheyne choses a seagull’s view. From the sea we swoop down on it. It’s a view that fishermen would understand. He has no need to call this St Monans. What other church could it be, but The Fisherman’s Church, with the clapper bridge in the foreground, driving rain on those stone walls, grey clouds, men out fishing in all weathers, even as the waves pound the shore? Gravestones pepper the green church yard. Fishing was more dangerous than mining in the Scottish 1930s. You needed faith.

He was influenced by the Japanese wood block artists and their use of perspective - so different from the previous William Wilson where the perspective is from the shore.

The gallery explains the process:

‘Cheyne cut nine blocks to make this work. He used five separate blocks, four of which are cut on both sides. Each of the colours would have been printed separately, layered one on top of the other. The inking of each block would be done by hand and each colour superimposed on top of the other in precise registration. The print is marked 4/20, showing Cheyne made just twenty copies.’

Cheyne was born in Broughty Ferry and the heart of the village still had fishermen then. Does that inform this piece? I would say so. Growing up just north of here in a similar setting, he would know the harsh nature of the sea.

William Wilson (1905 – 1972), St Monance, etching, 25 x 30cm, 1930, collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

This is William Wilson again, and it is a masterpiece of line engraving by an artist at the height of his powers. This is one of his most elaborate works. It is a similar view to the 1929 engraving, and we can recognise the same buildings, but this time he draws us down into the harbour, into the fishing world of nets and drying equipment and the etching is filled with drama. The sun breaking through the clouds highlights the everyday tools of the fishermen who huddle small along the sea wall. God is in his heavens, and the church, the kirk, is above all. This is not a religious piece, but it resonates with symbolism.

The two engravings by Wilson offer sharp comparison and Wilson’s development can be clearly seen.

John Guthrie Spence Smith (1880 -1951), St Monance Kirk, oil on canvas. 51 x 61cm, courtesy of The University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums. Donated 1953 by The Pilgrim Trust.

It’s another war, this time World War Two, and what did artists do? This painting is part of the Pilgrim Trust ‘Recording Scotland’ Collection, an artistic record of Scotland of around 130 paintings which they commissioned during the war, capturing everyday but iconic images in case the worst happened. The Collection is held in St Andrews Museum.

I found two other paintings of the church by John Guthrie Spence Smith, all painted from this inland spot. They have a quiet emotion about them that I could not fathom until I learnt more about the artist. Born in Perth, he had scarlet fever as a child that left him unable to either speak or hear, and after attending a school for the deaf and dumb in Dundee he went to Dundee College of Art, before moving to Edinburgh. He was known to his friends as ‘Dummy Smith’.

I could have wept.

I am assuming he preferred to paint from this location as there would be less footfall, less necessary exchange with people, compared to being within the busy village harbour with its taunting local children. His chosen position lines up with that other landmark, the Bass Rock. The lilac hills of East Lothian are across the Firth. You can see Edinburgh from the shore - it is not that far away.

Sir William George Gillies (1898-1973) St Monans, ink and watercolour on paper, 1949, 24.5 x 31cm,

From oils, engravings and one print, to two post-war watercolours. Gillies’ sketch from the shore is assured: ink outlines with watercolour infill. You can almost feel the speed, but it’s precise. An autumn chill pervades the piece, the pebble-strewn shore mimicking the black sky.

Gillies loved the changing moods of Scottish skies and landscape, and whilst he’s always associated with the Borders and Midlothian, he had an affection for the east coast fishing villages, and there are numerous watercolour examples of his East Neuk villages.

Anne Redpath (1895-1965) St Monans, Fife etching, 25 x 30cm, 1930, collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

1952 was a momentous year for Anne Redpath, as she became the first woman painter to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. There was always a sense of pattern in her work, perhaps something to do with growing up in Hawick, and being around those Border mill towns. The pinks, purples, blues and greens dominate here, streaking the scene in horizontal bands, with the grey church lined up with the grey harbour in sombre contrast. If you take the church out of the picture, it could be Cornwall.

Ian Fleming (1906-1994) St Monance oil on board, 60.5 x 90.5cm, collection of Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Wales.

Finally, Ian Fleming. Born in Glasgow, Fleming spent a substantial period of his life on the east coast of Scotland. From 1948–1954 he taught at Hospitalfield on the outskirts of Arbroath. Then he became Principal at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, from 1954 to 1972 and lived in Aberdeen for the rest of his life. He was familiar with Scottish harbours and fishing communities.

Fleming’s viewpoint is the same as Redpath took. Her pink cottages of the mid-1950s are now respectably terracotta, and the grey roofs of the white houses look neat along Shore Street. Faded brown nets are drying, but there is just a single blue boat in the empty harbour. The grey sky is as heavy as the harbour walls, pressing down on the picture. The church is blood red.

And soon, the fish had gone.

As Christopher Rush writes in ‘Hellfire and Herring: A Childhood Remembered’

“So the firth was fished out…

The village churches dwindled and emptied, one by one the shops disappeared.

St Monans settled down to await its swift extinction as a place of second homes for people with more money in their pockets than grandfather could have earned in a year.”

It was not intentional that I chose 12 artist’s images, like the 12 apostles. That was accidental. But what has amused me most? There is not one image of a fish.