Runciman next turned to the larger undertaking of which the St.
Margaret Cupola was but the prologue, and upon which he worked with
equal energy, for the ceiling of the Ossian Hall of Penicuik House can
hardly have been commenced before the end of 1772, and it was certainly
completed during the following year.
It was just ten years previously that “Fingal” (1762) and “Temora”
(1763) first appeared, and the controversy regarding their authenticity
still raged fiercely. Dr. Johnson and David Hume denied their claim
to be regarded as genuine Celtic poems, but they were defended by
Lord Kames, Dr. Gregory, and by Dr. Blair, who pointed out their
adaptability to the purposes of the painter, as presenting fitting
subjects for the exercise of his brush. It was probably upon this
suggestion that the Ossian ceiling was commissioned by Sir James Clerk,
and commenced by Alexander Runciman.
The centre of the ceiling is occupied by a large elliptical
compartment, depicting Ossian old and blind, singing, and accompanying
his songs on the harp. In front is seated the white-draped shape
of Malvina, and around are grouped a varied crowd of listeners. The
distance is a rocky coast, with ruined castles, and a fine expanse of
sea, across which white sails are speeding; and above, the clouds take
strange, fantastic, half-defined shapes as of spiritual presences, the
figures of the vanished heroes of whom the poet sings,—“The awful
faces of other times look from the clouds of Crona.” This compartment
is surrounded by an ornamental border of gold, which in its turn is
enclosed in a wreath of vine-leaves and fruit; and the four corners are
occupied by figures symbolical of the four great rivers of Scotland,
the Tay, the Spey, the Clyde, and the Tweed,—figures manifestly
reminiscent of the work of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel.
Beneath, round the ample cove or _volto_ of the room, is ranged a
series of smaller subjects from Ossian—“The Valour of Oscar,” “The
Death of Oscar,” “The Death of Agandecca,” “The Hunting of Catholda,”
one of the finest of the subjects, very graceful in the figure of the
nymph drawing a bow; “The Finding of Corban Cargloss,” an attractive
moonlit scene; “Golchossa mourning over Lamderg,” “Oina Morval
serenading Ossian,” a vigorous subject of “Cormac attacking the Spirit
of the Waters,” “The Death of Cormac,” “Scandinavian Wizards at their
Incantations,” in which the grotesque is in excess of the terrible, and
“Fingal engaging the Spirit of Lodi.”
If we were to criticise the ceiling purely as an example of decorative
art, we might well object that the elaboration and wealth of detail in
the work is hardly suitable to its position, that designs so placed
should have been simpler and more salient in their component parts,
and executed in a lighter and more airy scheme of colouring, so as to
carry the eye freely upwards. But as an example of poetic art, in its
earnestness of aim and vigour of conception, it is deserving of all
praise, as one of the very few instances that Scotland has to show of
a serious effort to produce a monumental work, a pictorial epic,—an
effort honourable alike to the painter and his patron. The art of
Runciman, as here displayed, may be regarded as the precursor of the
art of David Scott, another of Scotland’s most imaginative painters,
who was also powerfully attracted by the Ossianic legends, choosing
“Fingal and the Spirit of Lodi” for the subject of one of his earliest
works, and in another depicting Ossian himself, not surrounded by
sympathetic listeners as in this central compartment by Runciman,
but seated alone by the sea-shore, amid the last dying radiance of a
sunset, with his harp lying idle by his side.
It is recorded that about 1720 John Alexander, the grandson of George
Jamesone of Aberdeen, executed a “Rape of Proserpina” on a staircase in
Gordon Castle. After the completion of his work at Penicuik Runciman
decorated a church in the Cowgate of Edinburgh (now St. Patrick’s
Catholic Chapel) with sacred subjects, of which a portion still remain;
and—presumably in humble imitation of the Ossian Hall—Alexander Carse
painted an oval subject on the ceiling of the “Pennecuik Parlor” of New
Hall, Mid-Lothian, depicting “The Troops of Tweedale in the Forest of
Selkirkshire, convened by Royal authority in May 1685, as described in
Dr. Pennecuik’s Poems.” This brief list may be said to include almost
all the mural art—excepting such as was simply decorative—executed in
Scotland during modern times.
The Ossian ceiling formed the subject of a learned and elaborate
descriptive pamphlet, published anonymously, in 1773, by A. Kinnaird
and W. Creech, Edinburgh; and the painter would appear to have intended
to preserve a record of his work—in the manner afterwards adopted by
Barry, in the case of the illustrations of “Human Progress,” with which
he decorated the walls of the Hall of the Society of Arts in London,
for etchings, executed by Runciman’s own hand in a free and somewhat
loose style, of the first two subjects of the St. Margaret Cupola, and
of “Cormac attacking a Spirit of the Waters,” and “The Finding of
Corban Cargloss,” from the Ossian ceiling, are frequently to be met
with.
We have not been able to discover in Penicuik House Alexander
Runciman’s easel Picture of “Nausicaa at Play with her Maidens,”
executed during his residence at Rome, and shown in London, in the
Free Society of Artists’ Exhibition of 1767, a work which Allan
Cunningham informs us was “painted for Pennycuik”: and, on account of
the delicacy and transparency of its colouring, we should be inclined
to attribute to John Runciman, who died at Naples at the early age of
twenty-four, that sketch of “David with the Head of Goliath,” which has
been commonly assigned to the elder of the two brothers. Certainly by
John Runciman is the excellent picture of “Belshazzar’s Feast,” hung
in the Billiard-room, a work so delicate in its handling, so mellow in
the golden and ruddy tones of its colouring, as to support the opinion
held by some discerning critics, that this artist’s brief life afforded
definite promise of his becoming a far subtler and more refined painter
than the better-known member of his family ever was.