CHESHIRE CHARACTERS

ARCHIBALD MACKINNON

In the Barony Cemetery in Nantwich there is a grave which bears the following inscription:

Archibald Mackinnon was a Scottish artist whose story is told by Mr. Hamish Mackinven in the Scots Magazine of April 1988. The article tells how the Campbeltown Courier on August 20^th 1887 announced the discovery of a life-size picture of the Crucifixion, on the wall of a cave on Davaar Island at the mouth of the Campbeltown Loch.

The discovery was said to have been made by a yachtsman who had rowed to land, wandered into a cave, struck a match to light his pipe and, seeing the painting, fainted from the shock. The news quickly spread and hundreds of townspeople flocked to the island to see this extraordinary sight. The name of the artist who had done the painting was revealed in the next issue of the paper.

It was Alexander Mackinnon, a local artist, who said of the painting: "It is a subject which I have long had at heart. Early in the morning of the first day I began to paint, I awoke from a dream in which I beheld the body of our Saviour on the Cross". In the dream he had seen the actual rock face.

Mackinnon was one of five artists born in Campbeltown, a small town with a population of about 7,000, between 1819 and 1865. The other four all achieved considerable success but Mackinnon failed to gain recognition.

Nothing is known of his parentage. At 14 he worked in Glasgow as a messenger boy, became an apprentice engineer and attended evening classes at Glasgow School of Art. In 1886 he returned to Campbeltown as an art teacher in a local school but with the intention of opening a school of art in the town.

Shortly after the discovery of the painting he absconded from the town, apparently worried about the consequences of having used the school's materials to carry out the work.

For a time he worked at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Liverpool but then decided to become a full-time artist and settled with his wife and daughter in Nantwich at No.7, Laburnum Avenue.

When Mr. Mackinven was doing the research for his article in Nantwich he found an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Timmis, living at No. 8, who remembered the Mackinnon family and who supplied him with details about them. Archibald was a full-time artist with a studio in the town, now demolished, and his daughter owned a wool shop. Mr. Mackinven was shown three paint brushes which had belonged to the artist, one of them made with his wife's hair.

In the 1913 Street Directory, Mackinnon is listed as an artist but not in the professional section. He was often absent for considerable periods, leading Mr. Mackinven to believe that he was working as an itinerant artist.

One of his commissions was to paint Thomas Bateman, Chairman of the town's Board of Governors. The painting was considered to be very life-like but has now disappeared as have many of his paintings. However if anyone wishes to see an example of his work, they can find one in the lounge of the Lamb Hotel. It depicts a scene in the street outside showing a red-coated horseman on a white horse.

In 1902 Mackinnon returned to Campbeltown to restore his painting of the Crucifixion and went back there again in 1934 at the invitation of the Town Council, his expenses being paid from the Common Good Fund. It was thirty-two years since he had left the town and large numbers of people gathered to greet him. Newspapers throughout Britain carried the story, as did cinema newsreels.

On June 6^th 1934 an inaugural ceremony was held at the cave attended by all the town dignitaries, the Moderator of Kintyre Presbytery and the local Roman Catholic priest. Just eleven months later Archibald Mackinnon died in Nantwich, aged 85.

Mr. Mackinven adds that the cave painting was restored once more in the 1950s by Hugh McInally, art teacher in Campbeltown Grammar School, and also that two of Mackinnon's paintings hang in the Campbeltown Museum, one of which was valued by Christy's in 1986 at £2,500. He concludes his article with the reflection: "In the art world Mackinnon is long forgotten but his painting in the cave on Davaar Island must rank, if only because of its unique and striking situation, as one of the world's most remarkable depictions of the Crucifixion."

(Many thanks to Mr. Mackinven for giving us permission to use his article. Ed.)