Scotch, Water and Art

It’s true. The entire country does a strong business in unpronounceable names, but this particular town may well have the edge. Some believe that Kirkcudbright (pronounced Kir-COO-bri) once meant, in the local Gaelic, “the place on the bend of the river”--it being on a twist of the River Dee upstream from Solway Firth on the south coast. Others say that the pagan Gaelic name was cunningly Christianized after the 7th century monk St. Cuthbert founded a church here. According to this theory, followers kept the Gaelic sounds, but changed the spelling to mean “the kirk (church) of Cuthbert.”

However you slice it, with its handsome streets, quaint houses and intimate riverside setting, Kirkcudbright is arguably the most delightful town in Scotland’s under-visited South West district, an area past which most tourists race in their hurry to reach Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Highlands.

Situated on the underside of that aggressive “witch’s chin” that juts westward from the skinny neck where England and Scotland join, Kirkcudbright is the delightful “capital of Galloway,” in the region known as Dumfries and Galloway.

“If one lives in Galloway,” wrote the English writer Dorothy L. Sayers in the opening lines of “The Five Red Herrings,” her murder mystery set in Kirkcudbright’s 1920s artists’ colony, “one either fishes or paints”--or both, as did Sayers’ husband on their frequent visits.

Today, salt-rusted, battered little fishing boats, with names such as Rough Isle, or Annie and Nancy, still tie up along the harbor’s stone quay immediately south of the five-arched concrete bridge, which hasn’t changed since Sayers referred to its “galumphing curves.”

Sportfishing continues to be a popular, if expensive, pastime for visitors, but today Kirkcudbright is almost better known for its artistic and crafts community. “The St. Ives of Scotland,” it is sometimes called, after the town with similar affiliations in Cornwall. In fact, with its gorgeously colored 18th century houses and the unique light that has drawn artists over the years, Kirkcudbright is more reminiscent of a Mediterranean port than an old Scottish fishing town. Sayers was only one of numerous distinguished writers and painters who stopped and stayed awhile.

More than a century before her, Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, wrote his famous “Selkirk Grace” while seated at the Selkirk Inn on High Street. The inn still dispenses hospitality, and today offers the visitor far better fare and much prettier rooms than it did back then.

But my husband, John, and I, returning to a place we know and love well, preferred the greater freedom of renting. We consulted with a real estate agent in the area and looked over brochures showing available rentals. Ignoring such descriptions as “ideal for a family holiday” and “a remarkably reasonable rent for its space” (it slept eight!), we fell for the romantic picture of the exterior on a big old converted granary beside the quay, with windows opening onto the river. So we shouldn’t have been disappointed that the interior was plain, charmless and needed loving care.

But I forgave the granary much for its location. We would wake with a sense of excitement during the night to see the fishing boats arrive or leave quietly on the high tide, aglow with navigation lights. If the boats were arriving, we’d know the windows of the fishmonger’s shop would be full of good things in the morning.

There’s a timelessness about the River Dee. On gray days, it flows crinkled-milk-white past pale chocolate mud banks sloping down from the flat salt meadows on its far side. When the sun shone it tinted the water opal and streaked the chocolate souffle banks with silver blue. And when low tide tilted fishing boats against the harbor wall, the sea gulls probed for morsels in the black sea tangle and stirred up the pools with their feet, or perched on the masts, whining like carping fishwives.

Kirkcudbright’s fine old stone Tolbooth (the “booth” where the “tolls,” or taxes, were paid) has watched for 369 years over both river and town from its site at the angle of L-shaped High Street. Recently restored and given a new and happy lease on life as the Tolbooth Art Centre, it introduces visitors to the story of the artists’ colony that thrived from the 1890s and made the town an important center for Scottish art.

“Good real reasons are still pulling artists to the town today,” noted Dr. David Devereux, a thoughtful and enthusiastic Englishman who is curator of both the Tolbooth and the local Stewartry Museum. “Often they come here unaware of the town’s art heritage. What they see is the light, the landscape, the wide variety of potential subject matter in Galloway--the same things that drew the original artists.”

The Tolbooth’s designers have been sensitive to the newcomers, and the top floor exhibits contemporary work for sale and houses studios available for their use.

In the adjacent streets, where many of the original art colony lived, house-proud owners now polish their doorknobs within an inch of their lives, groom their sidewalks daily, shine their windows like toddlers’ faces and even mop the outside walls at ground level.

An easy stroll up the north leg of High Street from the Tolbooth brings you to the Hornel Art gallery at Broughton (pronounced “Brawton”) House, the very handsome home of the painter E.A. Hornel, guru of the early colony. Hornel’s house is the only one in this part of High Street open to the public. But don’t hurry your steps as you head there, for the privately owned old homes are a joy to behold.

First of all, there’s No. 46, Greengate. White with pistachio window trim, it was “lived and worked in by Jessie M. King and her husband, E.A. Taylor,” as a mosaic wall plaque proclaims. The present owners use a side entrance since a great cascade of flowers from a huge hanging basket completely blocks the front door, perhaps to deter tourists. E.A. Taylor was a distinguished furniture designer, and the eccentric King was a painter who delighted children with her book illustrations of elves, fairies, animals and flowers.

The Taylors started a summer school of art, and in the ‘20s and ‘30s it was said that no art student’s training was complete without a stay with them in Kircudbright. Longtime residents recall King, who personally believed in “the little people,” riding her bicycle along High Street, an extraordinary spectacle in broad-brimmed hat and flowing cloak, ankle-length dress and black, buckled shoes (did that bicycle always stay earthbound?).

Facing the Taylor house, at No. 57, is its reverse image--pristine pistachio green with white window trim--a dear little house that I rented from the same real estate agent for a week before my husband’s arrival in town. Immaculate inside and out, it was even more reasonably priced and I loved it dearly.

Nearby is another beauty that belonged to a painter--arresting in turnip orange trimmed in white, with luscious plum doors. Other homes in the area harmonize improbably in shades of rich terra cotta, pale blue, creamy mustard, olive green, sugar pink with pink lipstick trim, and a handsome black with tobacco, while a goodly handful retain their original warm old stone.

A high percentage boast elegant 18th century fanlight windows over the doors and classical pilasters--no drafty garrets for those lucky artists! Closes, tantalizing dark passages with glimpses of flowers twinkling in urns or beds at their far ends, run between many of the houses, sometimes leading to other houses but often no farther than a back yard.

The finest house, set back from the street, is undeniably Hornel’s former residence, Broughton House, which he bequeathed to the town on his death in 1933. Raised in Kirkcudbright, Hornel bought the house in 1901 when he was 37, and added a grandiose gallery and studio. His work, some of which can be seen at the house, along with splendid furniture and an immense library of Gallovidian literature, is highly variable in quality.

By the age of 27 he had allied himself with a group of young artists known as “the Glasgow Boys,” and was the group’s most prominent and successful member. At this time Glasgow had an intense love affair with everything Japanese, and in 1894 Hornel went on an 11-month visit to Japan. Back in Scotland, his new “Japanese” style became all the rage. But success ruined him as a serious painter, and from then on he churned out portraits of adorable Scottish or Asian children, often against blossom-filled backgrounds.

On her visits to Kirkcudbright, the witty Dorothy Sayers apparently clashed with Hornel. “Brilliant, erratic, rude and impatient,” as a friend described her, she probably pricked his vanity and deplored his potboiling. I asked the curator if there was a copy of “The Five Red Herrings” in Hornel’s fine library and she told me there was. The painter must have recognized in it Sayers’ wicked portrait of him as the self-important suspect, Gowan.

Behind Hornel’s house is his magical garden. He called it Japanese, but this is a bewitching Scotto-Japanese marriage in which Asian space, line and restraint has been overtaken by the sheer fecundity of Scottish nature. As in all perfect gardens, vistas open out and close up mysteriously, and paths lead off one knows not where. Following them, under archways of trailing wisteria or sweet pea, past lavender-edged beds of purple lupines or dusty rose hydrangeas, by a stand of old, dark conifers or a weighted apple tree, you might happen suddenly--pure theater--on a sundial-centered lawn, or a dark pool filling from a slow stream, or a graceful little Victorian greenhouse.

And inevitably, seen from over the wall at the bottom, the omnipresent river slips by. There’s a bench in a secret corner so that the painter might have viewed unseen the tranquil riverscape of small craft, mudflats and the rounded Galloway hills beyond, which, unforgivably, he never painted.

In this he was unlike his next-door neighbor, Charles Oppenheimer, whose more pedestrian yet honest canvases constantly portrayed the region and the town. In 1955, when Oppenheimer had filled the late Hornel’s shoes as the area’s foremost artist, he appealed to the public to preserve a well-known Kirkcudbright landmark near his house.

This was an 18th century cottage, slated for demolition, one of a harbor-side group of four white buildings (of which our rented granary was one) that is the most painted and photographed corner in town. Oppenheimer’s appeal was answered; the cottage was preserved and, in a peculiarly local manner, metamorphosed into the busy Harbour Cottage Gallery, an exhibition space with a full program of shows throughout the year.

I visited Linda Mallett, an articulate Londoner who has long lived in Scotland, at her studio at the other end of town. Her powerful work, exhibited both locally and away, is much affected by Galloway’s wilder regions. Like the Taylors long before her, Mallett runs her own small but very successful summer art school, offering an assortment of courses for adult groups of up to six, with a mix of outdoors and studio work.

Back in the shadow of the Tolbooth is Jo Gallant’s studio and shop, one of a handful of 17th century houses. It’s her home too. “My real studio’s up at the top of the house for the light.” Like nearly all the local artistic community, she came from somewhere else and had an initial adjustment to make. But the Galloway landscape has wrought its magic, its drifting moisture-laden light, plants, ancient stone dikes and wildlife finding their way into her highly original art.

Gallant apologized for having so little to show customers, but remarked that she “had had a very good summer.” Like truffle hunters, tourists armed with booklets and leaflets are beginning to hunt out Kirkcudbright’s crafts makers and painters.

High overhead, the new clock in the Tolbooth’s tower chimes the hours from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m. and politely desists in between--but then it’s a polite, benign, good-humored town.

Mr. Ross of William Ross, Grocers & Off License (meaning he also sells alcohol), on St. Mary’s Street, hovers, helpful and solicitous, in his fine shop full of Scottish good things.

A whole wall winks with wines, whiskeys, ales and beers. Mr. Ross helps you select fat lettuces and noble carrots; finds the cookies that you crave; scoops out from behind glass a shining ham, terrine or cherubic sausages. You reel out, salivating.

Past and present knit together here in a uniquely satisfying way. “It has a certain distinct, quiet charm of its own,” says David Devereux, of Kirkcudbright, “and it does things rather more slowly than everyone else.” Civilization here goes unbruised.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK: Artful Eye on Kirkcudbright

Getting there: American, Air Canada and British Airways have connecting service (one change of planes) from LAX to Glasgow; fares begin at about $895 round trip.

A car is an asset, and can be rented at Glasgow airport, or at Castle Douglas, near Kirkcudbright. Trains and buses run regularly from Glasgow Central Station to Dumfries.

Where to stay: For information on rentals in the area, from apartments to large hunting lodges, contact G.M. Thomson & Co., 27 King St., Castle Douglas, Scotland, DG7 1AB; telephone 011-44-1556-504-030, fax 011-44-1556-503-277.

They secured our accommodations, including my house at 57 High St., which rents for about $400 high season, about $290 low season.

An example of a high-end rental, on the river and suitable for a family, is a house called “Sandside,” on Dundrennan Road at the south end of town. Sandside, available through G.M. Thomson, rents for about $710 high season, about $400 low season.

The Selkirk Arms Hotel, High Street, Kirkcudbright, Scotland DG6 4JG; tel. 011-44-1557-330-402, fax 011-44-1557-331-639. The hotel has 16 bedrooms, all with private bathrooms. It serves good food in an attractive restaurant, and lounge-bar meals as well. About $140 double, with breakfast.

What to do: Kirkcudbright Painting Holidays (Linda Mallett’s painting school), 49 Millburn St., Kirkcudbright, Scotland, DG6 4BY; tel. 011-44-1557-330-274. Mallett is offering painting courses, Saturday through Monday, this summer; $135 including lunch and tuition but not accommodation.

There also is an 18-hole golf course on the edge of town, sailing and sandy beaches nearby, great walks, fine historical sights and excellent birdwatching.

For more information: British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 701, New York, NY 10176-0799; tel. (800) G0 2 BRITAIN (462-2748) or (212) 986-2200, fax (212) 986-1188, Internet https://www.visitbritain.com.