My connection to one of Scotland's leading artists

The National

a day ago

He was one of Scotland's leading artists, especially renowned for his portraiture and the Tam o' Shanter sequence of paintings.
I got to know Alexander 'Sandy' Goudie (1933-2004) on account of a red waistcoat. He had asked me to play cello at a Glasgow Art Club evening. I was playing my friend John Maxwell Geddes's atmospheric Callanish IV for solo cello.
I don't like to wear a jacket playing the cello. Instead, I wore a cherry-red waistcoat made of Irish tweed, made by O'Malley. O'Malley was a salesman of the old sort, who cried out his wares at the Royal Dublin Horse Show as though he were at a pig fair, in stark contrast (indeed opposition) to the fancy set-ups of Arthur Guinness, Son & Company, or Powers Irish Whiskey.
It was a splendid waistcoat unlike any other waistcoat you've ever seen. Against a white shirt, and with a cello cleaned up for the occasion, the tout ensemble was swank enough to make the occupant of the waistcoat a lesser consideration. Sandy fell for it.
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Sitting for Sandy was one of the real pleasures of life, and I can attribute a substantial percentage of that pleasure to his wife Mainée, of whom more anon.
Sandy was urbane and argumentative simultaneously. I don't know how he managed it.
He was, by my reckoning, disgracefully right wing – incurably so. I was happy to leave it at that. More than happy.
Conversation with Sandy, whether argumentative, philosophical or, rarely, silly, was always a pleasure. Besides, I didn't have to sit still.
He wanted me to keep on playing the cello, and I did. I loved it. I got to practise and Sandy never criticised my playing, though well he might have.
Playing the cello and knowing the instrument from every angle, and having had to suffer the representation of it (and the violin) by many an artist who should have known that the job was beyond him or her, I can safely say that Sandy is among a small elite in the history of art who can actually paint such an instrument accurately and yet with freedom.
The three-dimensional form of a violin and a cello is really hard to represent – especially as, when it is being played, it is necessarily presented in perspective. It already has its own perspective, being narrower above the waist than below. Nor are its ribs necessarily of uniform width – and so on. Sandy was a match for it.
As for the bow streaking across the strings, in the watercolour version he gave me for my 50th birthday, he represents half of it by its absence. The right hand holding the bow is beautifully painted.
Fingers are also tough to draw. That's why many portraitists conceal as many hands as they can. Sandy got them just right. They're made of flesh, not putty, and they are doing a job holding the bow – which they do with only minor subtle changes in their relationship with the bow
For that reason, Sandy has shown the fingers on that hand clearly and indicated the motion of the bow further along its length. The left hand, for its part, is much busier, and this he has sketched as though one could never have quite got a hold of it.
I never tire of looking at the skill, freedom and spontaneity of this work. It's watercolour. No going back. It was done once and once only and done fast – that you can tell by the freedom and flow of the brush strokes, of which there are very few.
It is truly a tour de force. But so are so many of Sandy's watercolours and drawings, particularly the Breton women, whose costumes and expressions are rendered archetypal with breathtaking economy.
Which brings me to Mainée, who is Breton. Mainée was always somehow there, even if I did not always see her. Her beauty and elegance, her courteous manner and formidable strength of character were wonderfully impressive and yet wholly hospitable.
I should have been frightened of her, but never quite managed it because her lively nature subverts her own magnificence.
I have, however, to confess that, amongst her most memorable qualities was (and I am sure still is, along with all the others) her ability to produce luncheon after luncheon of exquisite and original simplicity and inventiveness.
I would descend upon these (always accompanied by a judicious quantity of perfectly-selected wine) like a wolf ravaging the fold, only ending up being obliged to eat more like a tortoise in case I were to miss that little hint of a divided nut or perfectly sliced tomato, or carefully chosen olive, lurking among the greenery, itself a work of art that would put any other artist, in whatever medium you care to name, severely to the test.
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In such circumstances, I felt, it was not perhaps such a hard life being either a painter or a sitter. Indeed, my admiration for Sandy might have been dimmed somewhat, were it not that I had to conclude that his choice of a wife was remarkably judicious – though it occurs to me now in older age that women choose their men rather than the other way about.
If so, Mainée made a life-enhancing choice. Sandy was vibrant. You lived life in his company. I never once merely passed the time with him. It was all interesting, all to be savoured, all deserving of response, whether affectionate, adoring, angry or thoroughly pissed off.
It was human energy. Positive. The gift of life was not wasted upon this man, and he shared it most generously and with pleasure. He gave pleasure – lots of it.
Some years later, Sandy asked me round to have a peek at his forthcoming portrait of the Queen. I am a republican – an Irish republican – but Sandy was proud to be painting her and I was pleased for him.
He had chosen to show her atop Calton Hill, with the Palace of Holyrood below and, on its top, a flagstaff and an as-yet unidentified flag.
'You'd better get that flag right, Sandy', I said. 'Funny you should say that,' was the reply. Sandy had been accosted by some passing knight of the realm in Buckingham Palace, or some such place, who had said exactly the same as I had.
I told him it should be the Scottish quarterings for the Royal standard, with two lions rampant. He thought it was meant to be two sets of lions passant. We rang Lord Lyon there and then. The reply? We were both right.
I was right in that the Scottish quarterings were (and are) what should be displayed: Sandy was right in that the English quarterings were what is habitually displayed.
I haven't seen the finished work. I do hope I am not obliged to make a correction to it when some attendant isn't looking. Subsequently, I am told, the proper Scottish quarterings are what are now shown at Holyrood.
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I don't quite understand why Sandy should have died. Yes, he used his allotted gifts and energies to the full, but I can't conceive of him being exhausted. I suppose he was, but it doesn't fit with my experience and I can't remember him as anything other than a life force, forging ahead.
In that, he resembles Robert Burns. I think the last time I saw Sandy was at my 60th birthday, when he gave me one of his Burns prints. His work on Burns is – yes, I want to use this word – notorious. It is also notable.
I don't like it all, but the best of it is so right for the subject, verging dramatically from the sentimental to the horrific but always with that sense that a burst of humour will dispel the lot, that I find myself going back to it with intense admiration.
It mirrors Burns himself – uneven, but full of genius and, at times, very moving. They are all now housed at Rozelle House Museum and Art Galleries in Ayr – well worth a visit.
In the end, Sandy's big oil painting of myself was sold and then sold again and its whereabouts are now unknown. Funny thing, that. It was exhibited in London and my sister went to see it.
It was called 'John Purser plays Bach'. I do wish he'd asked me about the title. Who the hell am I to play Bach? Maybe I was playing in tune those days but even so, it simply won't do.
My sister (a professional flautist) was duly impressed by this imposing, very large, very perfectly executed and finished oil of her little brother doing his best for Bach.
But she could not help noticing the irony that in a side gallery in the same exhibition was a much smaller portrait of the internationally renowned Paul Tortelier playing his cello.
What can I say? Blessings on you, Sandy! You have given me a reputation (albeit in a lost oil painting) as a great cellist.
You have realised my dream for me. There, in its absence, the glorious sound of my deepest longings is waiting to be heard, and I have been transformed. For which, dear laddie, thanks.