Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell

Given by the artist to George W. Service in 1932

The board is sound. The work is in good condition, clean and ready to hang. Utraviolet light reveals one or two fluorescent areas of pigment towards the lower edge and to the centre of the left edge but it is likely that these are intrinsic to the work. Held in a gold painted wooden frame in fair condition. Under glass and unexamined out of frame.
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'Warmed by the sun, blown by the wind I sat
Upon the hill top looking at the sound.
Down in the church beneath, the people sat
On chairs and laughed and frowned.

No Chairs for me when I can lie
And air myself upon the heather
And watch the fat bees buzzing by
And smell the smell of summer weather.

Let them bow down to God unfound
For me the sound that stretches round
For me the flowery scented ground
Upon the hilltop looking at the sound.

No church for me to worship in
Confined by walls of dank dark stone.
For rather can I worship him
When I am out in his fair world.'

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, One Sunday in Iona, written in the summer of 1913.

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell served in the army during much of WW1 but during periods of leave he was able to make brief painting forays to the island of Iona in the Western Isles, a beautiful haven of tranquillity that he had discovered in 1912. During the war years the seclusion and peace of Iona had increased importance as a place of refuge and it was during these years that he painted some of his most striking landscapes of the white beaches and sculptural rocks. Iona also offered Cadell a different lifestyle to that of Edinburgh and as Roger Billcliffe illustrates "its simplicity of life – primitive almost – was obviously a welcome change from the style and pace of life of Edinburgh." Both Cadell and Samuel John Peploe spent many summer months in Iona, often together, and the paintings they produced perfectly express the spirit of the Colourist philosophy of painting, rendering the forms of the rocks and shadows in a dramatic language of colour and form. As historically significant as the still lifes and interiors painted in Edinburgh, the Iona views offer the viewer a unique sense of escapism, onto the expanses of white sands and the swathes of azure and malachite seas where no human presence disturbs one's contemplation of natural beauty. He drew solace from the tranquillity of the island and its people but as Billcliffe further states "its great attraction was its light and the rapidly changing colours of sand, sea and sky caused by the wind blowing in the clouds from the Atlantic. The fields, hills, farms and beaches of Iona never failed to offer Cadell some new subject" and in the present work, we can observe the highly skilled execution of colour and form which is so integral to Cadell's painting.