ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 11 



strong enough to enable him to impose his own views 

 on his public.) His later years were clouded by money- 

 troubles, arising, I believe, from no fault of his own, 

 as well as by much physical suffering. But his geniality 

 of disposition did not desert him under the strain : to 

 the last he never lost the power of rallying to a friendly 

 visit, and mustering his cheerfulness for the occasion. 

 One may perhaps sum up his life-work by saying that 

 he portrayed the notables of a neighbourhood, painting 

 them — if not always as well as he might and could have 

 done — at least as well as the taste of the time and place 

 required. In this age of centralization, artists occupying 

 his peculiar position — depending, that is, u|)on the patron- 

 age of a single country district ; in request in the 

 countryside whilst unknown in the capital — are surely 

 things of the past. And there is room in the interests 

 of art to regret that it is so. 



Andrew Currie. 



Andrew Currie, of Darnick, the local self-taught sculptor, 

 next claims our attention. As Frain claimed French 

 blood, so Currie, to judge from his appearance, had 

 probably a strain of the gipsy. That he belonged to the 

 order of the peasant genius admits of no doubt whatever. 

 Starting in life as a wheelwright at Earlston, he so 

 developed the shaping faculty that was in him as to 

 attract the attention of a gentleman of the neighbourhood* 

 by the cleverness of certain clay figures and bits of 

 wood-carving which he exposed in his shop-window. 

 He received a commission to carve a book-case, and 

 from this humble beginning rose to executing figures 

 for the niches of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. 

 His masterpiece, a work of unquestioned plastic inspiration, 



* Mr Cotesworth, father of William Cotesworth, Esq., sometime of 

 Cowdenknowea. 



