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The Glasgow Girls


Christian Jane (Chris) Fergusson


Anna and Isobel Hotchkis


Jessie M King


Jankel Adler


Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell


William Hanna Clarke


William Daniell


James Faed Junior


John Faed


Susan Bell Faed


The Faeds


David Gauld


Francis Grose


Tom Gourdie


George Henry


E. A. Hornel


James G (Tim) Jeffs


William Miles Johnston


Oskar Kokoschka


William Stewart MacGeorge


John Maxwell


Henry Joseph Moule


Charles Oppenheimer


James Paterson


Samuel John Peploe


William Bruce Ellis Ranken


William Robson


Charles William Stewart


Alick Riddell Sturrock


E A Taylor


Jim Sturgeon


JMW Turner


Edward Arthur Walton


Archie Sutter Watt


Jemima Wedderburn


Christopher Whall


George Wright


William Miles Johnston

Kirkcudbright's reputation as an artistic centre was maintained and enhanced in the 1920s by Jessie M King and E A Taylor.  Glasgow and Paris friends such as S J Peploe visited and were inspired to paint here.  Students from Edinburgh College of Art were encouraged to take the Taylors' art classes in the town and on the Isle of Arran.  This established links with young Edinburgh College of Art students such as Cecile Walton, Dorothy Sutherland, A R Sturrock, William and ("Bill) Miles Johnston.

 

As students and friends of Jessie M King, from 1918, Bill (as he was known to his friends) and his wife, Dorothy Nesbitt, were regular visitors to Greengate Close in the summer months where they stayed in one of the Close's cottages.  Bill was a highly talanted animal and bird artist, and his work was of such distinction that he was made a Life Fellow of the Edinburgh Zoological Society.  After the war he also assisted Sir Robert Lorimer in his work on the Scottish War Memorial in Edinburgh.  He also used bird and animal figures in his decoration of pottery, which he sold under the "Zoo" pottery brand.  He inspired Jessie M King to work in this medium of decorative art.

 

In 1940, the Johnston family moved to Kirkcudbright where Bill opened "The Crafts" in Castle Street, from which he sold his paintings, ceramics and a variety of painted wooden objects - plywood cut-outs of animals and birds are perhaps best remembered.  His watercolours of Kirkcudbright and the surrounding countryside (especially Carrick shore where the family had a hut) were much in demand locally.  During the Second World War the Johnston family befriended Ronald Searle, when he was posted here as soldier.  The Johnston daughters inspired his creation of the "St Trinnians Girls".  Dorothy Nesbitt later became a Town Councillor and was instrumental with others in saving the harbour cottages from demolition and creating the Harbour Cottage Art Gallery.

Carrick

Carrick

Carrick

Carrick

Barlay Mill, Gatehouse

Barlay Mill, Gatehouse

Galloway Landscape

Galloway Landscape