James Paterson (1854 - 1932)

Today's the day ........................ for a local artist

James Paterson PRSW RSA RWS was a Scottish landscape and portrait painter associated with The Glasgow Boys movement of artists. He is best known for his landscape paintings of Dumfriesshire, where he lived at Moniaive from 1885 to 1905.  And today, in the Church Hall in the village, there was an exhibition of more than thirty of his paintings.

The exhibition had been put together by the local community with the help of a bit of funding.  The paintings had all been borrowed from private owners - who for the most part lived locally.  The end result was a most interesting and well researched presentation of an artist who should be better known than he is.

It is in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow that probably the most well-known and much loved painting by James Paterson entitled 'The Last Turning (1885)' (see extra) is to be found.  It was painted in the village at a place which remains much the same today.  The community at Moniaive hope that they can put forward a convincing argument to the powers that be, that the painting should come back to somewhere more local ...................