William McTaggart, R.S.A., R.S.W. 1835-1910

Bought from the Royal Scottish Academy 1862;
Mr. W. A. Lauder, Carrick-on-Shannon;
Mr Frank Stevenson, Dundee

Glasgow, Royal Institute of Fine Arts, 1861-1862, no. 357;
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1862;
Dundee, Loan Exhibition, 1912 as The Home Coming

James L. Caw, William McTaggart R.S.A., V.P.R.S.W.; A Biography and an Appreciation, 1917, pp. 34, 35, 225

James Caw described the subject of The Yarn; 'A young man-o'-war's man, just back from foreign parts, he is relating his adventures eagerly to an elderly countryman and a smiling-faced little girl as they jog homewards in a blue-bodied and red-wheeled farm-cart, drawn by an old white horse. A breadth of golden cornfield, in which the harvesters are working, separates the dusty roadway from the placid sea loch beyond, and the whole scene, except the right corner, which is filled with over-brown shadow, is suffused with clear and warm, if somewhat low-toned, sunshine.' (James L. Caw, William McTaggart R.S.A., V.P.R.S.W.; A Biography and an Appreciation, 1917, pp. 34-35). The Yarn is among McTaggart's earliest paintings of importance, and took the artist several years to complete. The model for the older male figure in the painting was McTaggart's own father who posed in 1860 for sketches shortly before his death and the background was painted at Campbeltown in 1861.