In Hawick our first house was called Lintalee, at number 4 Buccleuch Place. This was a very short street which led into a much longer, very steep street called Beaconsfield Terrace. Great fun free-wheeling down it on your bike. Harder walking up to visit our school friends. Kent offers few hills for Sheila to prepare for the 3G Kili Climb but in her youth she sure did climb a lot of hills. There were so many in Hawick and in the countryside all around. One day we formed the BBC, the Buccleuch and Beaconsfield Club with its own secret rules. To be a member you had to live in Buccleuch Place or Beaconsfield Terrace. No one told us and there was no plaque on the door but years later I found out that Anne Redpath, one of the most famous Scottish artists of the 20th century, had lived at number 36 Beaconsfield Terrace.
She was of the same generation as our grandparents (her dates are 1895 – 1965) and a good friend of theirs. In fact, three of her paintings were hung in the sitting room at Woodgate (the home our BOGOF grandparents shared); a rather gloomy portrait of Auntie Sheila, (our father’s sister) a glorious painting of poppies, and a scene from the south of France perhaps or Spain of white steps leading up to a house, flowers spilling out of pots on either side.
She was born in Galashiels in 1895 but when she was 6 years old her family had the good sense to move to Hawick, a far superior town (Teris, that is Hawick-born folk, just know they are better in every way than Galashiels-born Braw Lads). To tell the truth, the move took place because her father was appointed head of design at Glebe Mills, tweed manufacturers. Later she was to say that she did in her paintings, “with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey”, what her father had done in his Hawick tweed. She went to Hawick High School, (as we did years later). She then studied at Edinburgh College of Art, married and moved to France, devoting much of her time to her family and doing little painting. But she started painting again when she returned to Hawick in the mid 1930s and bought the house in Beaconsfield Terrace with money left to her by her father when he died in 1939.
This is her painting of Primulas at Wilton Park Greenhouse in Hawick. When Sheila, Robbie and I were children, we would often be taken into the greenhouses in the walled garden by our mother. Sheila remembers our mother occasionally nipping off a small bit of plant and popping it in one of our pockets, so that it could be potted up as a cutting to enhance our garden. I am certain Sheila, who has inherited her green fingers, can be trusted not to pop any plants into her pocket during the climb up Kilimanjaro – she knows that anything growing up the highest free standing mountain in the world would not take kindly to being moved to Kent in any event!
Anne Redpath’s subjects were often domestic, still lives and portraits, but she travelled widely and painted wonderful landscapes and dark church interiors. When you look at her work, and there are many examples on the internet, the technique and wonderful colours remind us of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse. Her paintings brought her fame in the Scottish art world and later still wider acclaim. She was President of Hawick Art Club, President of the Scottish Society of Women Artists and the first female painter to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy, awarded the OBE in 1955. I bet if we had asked her she would have been thrilled to be President of our BBC.