29 September 2025

As a child, I was privileged to live nearby St. Columba’s Cave in Ellery. We visited it and remembered it as an awesome place. When Columba sailed from Ireland to Scotland, he landed on Kintyre before sailing on to Iona and his missionary endeavours in the West Highlands.

William McTaggart, one of Scotland’s most celebrated landscape artists from the nineteenth century, was born on Kintyre. Some of his famous landscapes are really seascapes where the waves come alive. You can smell the salt, feel the breeze and almost touch the water with your hands.

In the National Gallery of Scotland there are some McTaggarts. Recently, I saw ‘The Coming of Saint Columba’. It celebrates that historic sixth century  moment when Columba and his monks arrived on Kintyre. The painting has three distinctive features.

Firstly, it is infused with morning light. This is the start of a new day, a new age, the age of Christianity. It is the Spring, the season of growth and new life. The combination of morning light and Spring’s new life gives the painting an attractive optimism. It is hopeful.

Secondly, the boat is small compared to the surrounding sea. It is not lost in the large canvas but having titled the painting, ‘The Coming of Saint Columba’, one would have thought it would have greater prominence. It reminded me of the Breton fishermen and their prayer, ‘O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.’

Thirdly, to the right of the canvas, McTaggart has brought some additional life. There is a family lying on the beachhead. It is only the father who is idly watching the boat arrive. The mother and child are engrossed in play. A story of remarkable significance is unfolding and the historical moment goes almost unobserved.