If I was to heist a gallery… « Castle Green Days

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If I was to heist a gallery…

November 5, 2007 by piereth

This is what I’d steal.

Posted in Art | 6 Comments

6 Responses

on November 6, 2007 at 6:19 pm Jenny

Interesting … kind of sad, but comforting in a way. Who’s the artist?
on November 6, 2007 at 7:02 pm piereth

Jenny, it’s called ‘St Bride’ and it’s by John Duncan, a Scottish artist working around the start of the 20th Century.

He wa something of a mystic, but deals in Christian iconography as you see- My thought was always, there’s a little girl, saying her prayers, and the angels carry her to God over the sea… strange, but I love it. I know it can be seen as sad but the colours, and the care on the angels’ faces, makes this a very happy picture for me. It’s saturated with goodness.

On the original, which I’ve had the privilege of seeing, the angels are outlined in red paint – very symbolic.
on November 7, 2007 at 10:35 pm truce

I’ve seen this in the ‘paint’ as it were, but I can’t remember where – it was definitely in a downstairs room, at the foot of a flight of stairs I think. Is it in Edinburgh?

I, too, remember its other-worldly beauty with pleasure.

I’m going to try and figure out how to link to your post and do my own “What I would steal”…
on November 7, 2007 at 10:48 pm If I were to heist a gallery… « curiouser and curiouser

[...] to piereth at Castle Green Days for the [...]
on November 8, 2007 at 12:47 am mamatried

I absolutely love the painting! I also know that some of my favorites became so after seeing the real thing. One of them is the ‘Old Man & Guitar’ which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. It is this enormous painting and so beautiful and I like the reproductions but they don’t match the intensity of the original
on November 8, 2007 at 8:47 am piereth

Hey Truce, I’ll have to see what you’ve done here, what’s a pingback? I’m so ignorant! You’re right of course, National Gallery of Scotland, downstairs. It’s tiny in the flesh, only about 2 foot square.
mamatried, I’m really glad you like it – Truce and I were at college together and we spent some time lurking in the various galleries of our college city…. this one really caught my attention. Seeing the paint on the canvas is so much more effective – you get the 3-D quality and much more of the artist’s intention… I’ll check out that painting you mention – sounds wonderful!