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The Taste of JW Blyth
Peter Arkell and Guy Peploe
Origins and beginnings
John Waldegrave Blyth (1873–1962) was a Kirkcaldy linen manufacturer with a passion
for art collecting that began in his early thirties. By the time of his death he owned 237
paintings including 84 by Samuel John Peploe (1871–1935) and 45 by William McTaggart
(1835–1910). There were also 24 works by Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942),
examples by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), Eugène Boudin (1824–98) and
Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), an L.S. Lowry (1887–1976), a Matthew Smith (1879–
1959) and many more. The first paintings were bought in 1909 and he was still buying six
years before his death. A large part of the collection is now in the Kirkcaldy Art Gallery,
but a very significant portion was retained, and the exhibition which accompanies this
publication represents the last works held by the family. It is more than fitting that this
exhibition takes place at The Scottish Gallery from where so much of the collection was
bought and with whom Blyth enjoyed such a long and fruitful relationship. His faith in
The Scottish Gallery over fifty years and four generations of senior partners and staff
and the access the gallery provided to great works of art speak of an unusually strong
and fruitful relationship between a gallery and a collector. The story of his collection
and his developing passion for art spans two world wars, the Depression and the struggle
in Scotland to identify a national school and establish institutions to best represent
Scottish art.
The family was of Fife origin, and his grandfather, John, moved to Kirkcaldy
in the early 1830s and became involved in the linen business. Flax was imported from
Germany and the Low Countries and improvements to the harbour in the mid-nineteenth
century greatly enhanced Kirkcaldy’s ability to import jute and flax and export coal and
manufactured products. Linen manufacture had been established in 1672 but was little
more than a cottage industry on the outskirts of the town. By the end of the century John
Blyth’s grandfather was able to build the Hawklymuir Factory on Park Road and was in
charge of a substantial, profitable business.
Blyth’s father left the firm in the 1850s and moved to Lincolnshire to work in a
bakery; bakers were a major market for linen products and this may well have been the
connection, but for our story most importantly it was here that he met and married
Elizabeth Waldegrave. The family returned to Kirkcaldy in the 1870s, drawn back into
the fold of the family business, and John, the eldest of four brothers and one sister, was
sent to be educated at the Kirkcaldy High School. Aged 18, John Waldegrave Blyth left
school and took up a position as a travelling salesman in the family firm.
Their firm’s fortunes were based on demand created for linen goods for use in
the British military for the defence of the Empire, and procurement contracts for the
First World War led to a period of prosperity which coincided with Blyth’s burgeoning
interest in art. However the introduction of cotton into Europe, and especially the
series of late-eighteenth-century inventions that enabled it to be spun strongly and
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