We have now to examine the mural decorations of Penicuik House, which
include the celebrated Ossian ceiling of the room designed for a
picture-gallery, and now used as the Drawing-room. But first, two
smaller cupolas surmounting the staircases which give access to the
upper floor of the mansion are deserving of notice. One is decorated
in upright compartments, showing Jupiter in his car drawn by snakes,
wielding his thunderbolts, with a moonlit landscape beneath, and on
the other side a figure of Apollo, with yellow rays circling his
head, driving his team of fiery white steeds over a landscape which
is beginning to blush beneath the rosy light of dawn. Between these
are ranged a series of allegorical figures of the Months, each marked
with a sign of the Zodiac, and surrounded by scrolls, grotesque birds,
and beasts, and vases. The whole is relieved against a light green
background, and the compartments are divided by broad bands of ochre.
This curious example of the decorative art of the end of the last
century is the work of John Bonnar, then a decorative painter in
Edinburgh; and when, a hundred years after its execution, his grandson
and great-grandson, who were at the time pursuing the same business in
the same city, cleaned and restored the work, along with the Runciman
ceilings, their ancestor’s signature was disclosed upon a corner of its
surface.
The other cupola is decorated by the hand of Alexander Runciman,
with scenes from the life of St. Margaret of Scotland, whose history
furnished only the other year a subject for the brush of another of the
most imaginative of our Scottish painters, Sir Noel Paton. Curiously
enough we can find no single reference to this important St. Margaret
series in any of the biographies of Runciman, or in the anonymous
pamphlet, published in 1773, which so elaborately describes the ceiling
of the Ossian Hall. Both series are executed in oil colours upon the
plaster. Here the decorations consist of four oval compartments, each
occupied with a scene from the life of the Queen.
The first shows “The Landing of St. Margaret.” Its background is a
rich blue sky, and a distance of stormy sea. In the centre is King
Malcolm, clad in a broad Scottish bonnet with a little white plume, red
knee-breeches, white hose and white shoes with ample rosettes, and with
a red cloak flapping around him in voluminous folds. With one hand he
leads the lady, robed in a yellow mantle and a white dress, her long
yellow hair tossed by the wind, and with the other points energetically
towards the church before them, where white-robed monks, with clasped
hands, are awaiting their arrival.
The second subject is “The Royal Wedding.” The pair are being united
by a venerable and aged ecclesiastic with a grey beard, whose bronzed,
weather-beaten countenance tells splendidly against his elaborate white
vestments. To his right is the King, crowned and robed in red, placing
the ring on the hand of the Queen, who stands draped in gold-brocaded
white and green. An altar appears to our right, and beside it a
mail-clad knight, with head bowed in worship. The figures of women are
introduced to our left, and white flowers and a steaming censer lie on
the ruddy marble pavement beneath.
The third subject shows the manner of the saint’s queenship. She is
known to her people in the breaking of bread; clad in the same robes
that she wore at the marriage festival, she is feeding the poor, and
her husband, in his red mantle and wearing his royal crown, follows in
attendance upon her, bearing a heaped platter.
The fourth subject shows the final development of Queen Margaret’s
saintship. Having on earth filled herself with the life of heaven, she
is now seen, white-clad, and with a red robe falling from her shoulders
like the mortal life that she is done with, ascending inevitably into
skies, where the clouds dispart to disclose the benignant figure of
the Almighty Father and the white shape of the Holy Dove. Beneath is
outspread a familiar landscape which she is leaving for ever—the
Fifeshire hills appear on the right on the farther side of the Firth,
and beneath is the town of Edinburgh, with the Palace, and the
Castle rock crested with her chapel, and to the left the Pentlands
which overlook Penicuik, with a kindly ray streaming from above, and
irradiating their summit.
In spite of all deductions that may be made on account of occasional
crudities and defects, and of the glaring anachronisms of costume that
are apt to offend our more archæologically cultured eyes, the series is
a remarkable one, with great richness and variety of colouring, and
with a dramatic power which goes directly to the heart of the legendary
tale, and portrays its incidents in a vivid and impressive manner.
Dealing for the most part with definite history, the series is more
complete in its realisation than was possible in some of the visionary
subjects from Ossian which the painter afterwards essayed in the Hall
of Penicuik House.
The three last-named subjects are signed: the second bears the date of
“Sept. 7, 1772,” the third “Octr. 14, 1772,” and the fourth “Octr. 6,
1772.” The inscriptions are interesting as showing that the subjects
were executed immediately after the painter’s return from Italy, and as
illustrating the impetuous speed with which he must have worked.