The Holy Day of St Bartholomew
I am a long admirer of Peter Anson. Not only did he co-found the Apostleship of the Sea, but he left a legacy of articles and longer writings – some about the North-east – and a shedload of paintings. In all he penned some 40 books including titles as diverse as The Caravan Pilgrim and A Tourist Guide to Banff. The paintings are mainly maritime in theme and encompass every aspect of seafaring from the hauling in of nets to the painting of the ships-painters colouring the hulls of ships and of course the seafarers who sailed them. His skills in drawing seafarers were somewhat mixed and often simplistically stylised but when you realise that he used images and even postcards from other artists as inspiration this is not surprising. His ship paintings and his harbour-head work is however often stunning. Macduff, Portsoy, Banff and Aberdeen feature in his work and, in an age when photography had pretty much overtaken the activities of the harbour-head painters he produced a...