The Arts

A MOTHER and son from Helensburgh were both highly rated artists.

That was the conclusion of administrator Mary-Jane Selwood when she researched the pair for the Anderson Trust Local Collection.

TWO of Scotland’s leading pipers of their respective generations lived in Rhu and worked on the Clyde Training Ship Empress in the Gareloch.

Murdo MacDonald and Archie McNeill shared their love of the bagpipes, but otherwise lived very different lives — Murdo as a soldier, Archie, who was blind, as a teacher and composer of pipe music.

ONE of Scotland’s celebrated poets and novelists was the so-called Ettrick Shepherd . . . and he spent a night in a bothy overlooking Loch Sloy.

James Hogg (1770-1835) had a cousin who lived there in squalour, yet the very next evening he was wined and dined at Inveraray Castle as a guest of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll.

WHEN a young American girl arrived at Helensburgh’s St Bride’s School in 1921, it was the surprising start of a life’s work in Gaelic folklore.

Dr Margaret Fay Shaw, who died in 2004 at the age of 101, was one of the most notable collectors of authentic Scottish Gaelic song and traditions in the 20th century.

AN EARLY visiting artist who came to Helensburgh to paint taught both Queen Victoria and her daughter Princess Louise.

William Leighton Leitch, who was born on November 22 1804 in Glasgow, near the Royal Infirmary, liked the open aspect of Helensburgh seafront and captured it in watercolour sketches.

THE REMARKABLE career of a former child acting star from Helensburgh took another step forward in September 2018.

It was the launch of the BBC newspaper drama series ‘Press’, directed by the highly regarded Tom Vaughan, and it came the day after his 49th birthday.

A TRIDENT submarine from Faslane seemed an unlikely subject for a painter in watercolour.

But Rhu artist and architect Robert Barbour, who died on January 31 2012, was up for the challenge.

A HELENSBURGH man who was a champion of the arts had many connections with Charles Rennie Mackintosh — and was a huge fan of the famous architect’s Hill House mansion in Upper Colquhoun Street.

A FAMOUS ‘play with tunes’ about the legendary music hall star Sir Harry Lauder by Helensburgh actor and comedian Jimmy Logan was revived for two nights at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in December 2017.

ONE of the hugely talented ‘Glasgow Boys’ artists who taught and worked in Helensburgh and District in his youth became a major figure in the London art world.

John Lavery, later Sir John, was given a two-page spread in the February 24 1912 edition of The Sphere, An illustrated Newspaper for the Home.

THE WORK of one of Helensburgh’s outstanding architects of years gone by can still be admired around the town.

Robert Wemyss FI Arch (Scot), LRIBA, is not as well-known as his contemporaries Charles Rennie Mackintosh and William Leiper, but he contributed a great deal to the look of the town centre and other areas.

WHY the infant town of Helensburgh came to have a theatre is a mystery.

One source which does offer a few clues is the book “A Nonogenarian’s Reminiscences of Garelochside and Helensburgh and The People who Dwelt Thereon and Therein”, written by Donald MacLeod (1883).