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a warning of what we have escaped is the over-patriotic room of scottish
painters, parked by themselves. We have too often seen Mctaggart in
quantity, admirable though his buffetings of sea weather and strange
bleachings at the end of light undoubtedly are. a few of them and
of lawton Wingate’s landscapes would have been more effective if
distributed and the later, bold Peploes would be better away.
the london exhibition was Blyth’s last involvement in a major show south of the
border, but he was neither embittered nor persuaded to go in a new direction; indeed the
collection continued to grow with both scottish and english additions.
there is no doubt that Blyth’s loans to the Kirkcaldy art Gallery allowed him
greater scope as a collector. the existence of two geographically separate locations for
the Blyth Collection raises the question as to whether he saw his collection as a whole or
as two separate entities. either way, he could surely never have imagined 84 s.J. Peploes
and 45 Mctaggarts in one building.
he generally acquired good examples of a particular phase of an artist’s work
which fitted in to the collection as a whole; and, while all the works were still legally
his, one can speculate that having the receptacle of the Gallery to hand gave him full
licence to indulge his passion. ‘once hooked he could not stop collecting,’ recalled his
daughter Margery. for many collectors, possession is secondary to the pursuit. there
are numerous instances of collectors working closely with a particular institution with
clear objectives, often the perpetuation of the name and reputation of the benefactor;
but Blyth did not seem to share this vanity, which is partly why his name is not better
known today. the arrangement with the Gallery allowed not only a sensible management
of his obsession, but also, perhaps, a justification: works on public display had a purpose
and could do good. he spoke to local Rotarians in 1954 and was quoted in the Fifeshire
Advertiser under the headline ‘John Blyth says go and enjoy the pictures again’.
Jack Blyth with henry
Willies, curator of Kirkcaldy
Museum, discussing a Peploe
still life in the harley Bequest
of 1950.
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