Completed Portraits: British 20th C 18 Who painted this portrait of Major Andrew Alexander Pitcairn (d.1941)?

Major Andrew Pitcairn
Topic: Artist

This portrait is signed in monogram upper left, possibly ‘HG’. Could anyone identify the artist please?

Andrew Alexander Pitcairn, grandson of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pitcairn, joined The Black Watch as Second Lieutenant in 1920. He rose to the rank of Major in 1938 and served in Palestine from 1937 to 1939. He was Temporary Lieutenant Colonel commanding the 2nd Battalion in the Defence of Crete in 1941, and was killed in action during the breakout from Tobruk later that year whilst second-in-command of the 2nd Battalion.

The collection has attached images of the monogram and details from the back of the painting's frame. Unfortunately they are unable to remove the frame to see the back of the canvas.

Martin Hopkinson, Entry reviewed by Art UK

4 attachments

Completed, Outcome

This discussion is now closed. We have been unable to identify the artist from the monogram. However, a photograph of Major Andrew Alexander Pitcairn (1901–1941) taken on his wedding day in 1938 confirms the identity of the sitter and the work has been dated c.1930 (?).

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion. To anyone viewing this discussion for the first time, please see below for all the comments that led to this conclusion.

17 comments

Osmund Bullock,

I fear this will be difficult to track down, as to me it looks like an amateur work, and/or based on a photograph (and if the latter it might even be posthumous).

Pitcairn was born 9 Mar 1901, and I would guess this shows him in the mid/late-1930s. He was a Scot through and through, as was his wife Goda de Pree, through her mother a great-niece of Field-Marshall Douglas (Earl) Haig. They married in August 1938, and had one child, a son David (b.1939); he was tragically killed three years after his father when a de Havilland Mosquito on a training flight crashed into his maternal grandparents' house in Haddington in the middle of the night. His nanny, his grandmother and her brother also died in the ensuing fire.

In 1930/31, 35/36 & 39/40 Pitcairn is registered as an elector at his parents' home in Edinburgh, and in 1934 in barracks at Perth - which suggests that when not overseas with his regiment he was based with them in Scotland. However an obituary mentions a period as adjutant and quarter-master of the Army School of Education, but when and where I don't know - for example there was one in India (where Pitcairn is also said to have served). So if it is an ad vivum work, a Scottish artist is more likely - but it could be the work of someone, perhaps a fellow soldier, that he came across abroad.

Osmund Bullock,

One possibility is that ‘HG’ is in fact ‘GH’, and that the artist might be George [Alexander Eugene Douglas] Haig, 2nd Earl Haig (1918-2009). 'Dawyck' Haig, as he was usually known, was first cousin to Major Pitcairn's mother-in-law, Ruth de Pree (née Haig, 1873-1944). At the time of Pitcairn's death Haig was a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, but after WWII he trained at Camberwell and became a highly successful professional artist. However, he had been painting extensively while a POW in Italy & Germany (partly at Colditz) from 1942 (he was captured in the Western Desert in July); and as this obituary makes clear he was already sketching during the early part of his overseas military service (1939-41) in Palestine (and Syria): https://ind.pn/2UAgVtl. In fact, as the obit hints at, he had been painting long before that – a centenary exhibition last year at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh (where he regularly exhibited) mentions a youthful artistic talent, and illustrates two examples from 1932 & 1935. See https://bit.ly/2GFkWsG. Unfortunately the signature on the 1935 work (when he was 16 or 17 – see attached) is pretty much the same one he used during the war and in his later career: ‘Haig’, and then ‘HAIG’, or occasionally ‘H’. He seems to have used a monogram briefly in the 1960s, but its form was very different to ours. See attached.

Osmund Bullock,

Interestingly the two men could easily have come across each other in the Levant or N. Africa, as Pitcairn also served there with the 2nd Bn Black Watch. The battalion was in Palestine until late 1939 or early 1940; and then, as far as I can gather from regimental records, in both Syria and Egypt (prob just in transit) at various points during 1940/41 until they were sent to Tobruk, where Pitcairn was killed in action on the 21st Nov 1941. Nevertheless I tend to think that a portrait from when he was on active service overseas (however informal and off-duty) would likely show him in a uniform shirt; and my guess is still that our work (or the photo on which it may have been based) dates from before the war. Such an early date might explain a portrait that is so different in style to Haig’s subsequent work, and perhaps even an experimental monogram. But in truth, despite this long analysis I’m beginning to doubt that our portrait is by him! I do note, though, that the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, where Haig exhibited from 1945, was part of Aitken Dott & Son; and it is their label that is on the back of our portrait’s frame (until the 1980s they were also frame-makers). See https://bit.ly/2PvKGdR.

There is actually a clear reference number (N3777) on the label which might be traceable in Aitken Dott’s archives – some are in the National Library of Scotland, others held privately (possibly by the company’s former manager/?owner, William Jackson). See https://bit.ly/2IUoWHd. I wonder, though, if the portrait’s quality really merits such deeper research

Thanks very much for the link to the NLS collections, Osmund. I do think it would be good to follow this up and have made a note to do so next time I'm in Edinburgh (unless anyone nearer gets there first).

Louis Musgrove,

Monogram-- I don't see GH ---I see I G T
Shirt--- as an officer he would have worn his own shirts- not issued kit-- and for the tropics they would have almost certainly been made of pale green cotton or Viyella.

I think it would be advisable to consider what relationship, if any, the donor of the painting, the late Miss Martin, had either to the sitter, Major Pitcairn, or to the as yet unidentified artist. In regard to Major Pitcairn it appears from Osmund's valuable research that he had no issue but his widow survived him but for how long we do not know. From the label relating to Miss Martin's gift it appears to me that she did not know Major Pitcairn's history in detail as she refers to his death at Tobruk in 1940 whereas the event was actually in 1941 as set out above. Thus I think the vendor was likely to be unconnected with the sitter. I have checked various Scottish exhibition catalogues of the period and cannot find an artist 'Martin' known for this type of portrait.

I suspect it more probable that Miss Martin acquired the painting by gift or purchase sometime post 1940. The frame, canvas and Aitken Dott label look to be original and untouched. If this assumption is correct it puzzled me as to how Miss Martin knew that the sitter was Major Pitcairn and that he had died at Tobruk. I then noticed from image img-3375-1.jpg above that there appears to be a label tucked in between the lower edge of the stretcher and the canvas, something I do all the time to avoid labels getting lost! I suspect that that label (if that is was it is) gives the information Miss Martin noted later and I wonder whether it identifies the artist. It would help greatly if the collection could examine that piece of piece and to advise what it reveals (if anything!).

Kieran Owens,

The donor of the painting, Katherine Ruth Fane Martin, was born in Dharmsala, Bengal, India, on the 6th September 1896. She was the daughter of Colonel Edward William Fane Martin, of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Gurkha Rifles (see attached), and Elizabeth Katherine Mackenzie, daughter of James Mackenzie of Auchenheglish.

Her parents had been married at Dharmsala on the 11th January 1893. Her father died at Abbattobad, India (where he is buried), of malarial fever, on the 13th September 1906. Her mother died in Edinburgh on the 27th April 1943, where her cremated remains were buried in that city's Dean Cemetery.

Katherine's older brother, Ronald Fane Martin, was born on the 9th August 1894, at Moffat, Dumfriesshire, and died on the 25th January 1984. He had served as Assistant Observer Group Officer in World War II.

Katherine's younger brother, Captain Cyril James Mackenzie Martin, of the Royal Engineers, was born in India on the 27 August 1901 and died in Kelso, Roxburghshire, Scotland, in 1961. In December 1937, married Doreen Denholm Fraser.

Katherine died on the 12th January 1996, aged 99, at 41 Abingdon Court, Kensington, London, where she had lived for many years. She was subsequently buried in the family plot at Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh.

There is a possibility that there is a connection of friendship between the Pitcairn and Martin families, given that they had Edinburgh in common. Otherwise, whether there is some family relationship between the Martin and Pitcairn families, or whether there was some connection through military channels, is to be pursued.

Osmund Bullock,

I think I may have found the connection, though it is purely circumstantial and will be hard to prove. It also gets us nowhere in our search for an artist.

Like Kieran I can find no substantive genealogical link between Andrew Pitcairn – his mother was a Macdonald, his grandmother a Stevenson – and any members of the extended Martin family. However our donor Katherine Fane Martin’s younger brother, Major (acting Lt Col) Cyril James Mackenzie Martin, RE, was a close contemporary of Major Pitcairn’s (they were born less than six months apart), both were Scots and regular officers with family in Edinburgh...and both were important officers at Tobruk during the siege.

Major Martin was there throughout, from April to Dec 1941, and his contribution was crucial, earning him mentions in despatches in Dec ’41 & June ’42, and finally the award of an OBE in Sept ‘42 – his recommendation, detailing the vital engineering work he undertook during the siege, is attached. Pitcairn probably arrived in Oct ’41, when the 2nd Bn Black Watch were sent to Tobruk as part of the 6th (later 70th) Infantry Division to relieve the Australian 9th Div who had been a major part of the garrison defending the port since April. Pitcairn was killed in the first phase of the breakout a month or so later, ‘Operation Crusader’, during which the 2nd Black Watch suffered 75% casualties. It is not hard to see how two men of the same age, rank, nationality and family background could in even a short time have formed a strong friendship in the intense atmosphere of a fortress under siege – and of course they may well have known each other already from Scotland.

As Kieran relates, Cyril Mackenzie Martin died in January 1961 – he seems to have been a regular from around 1922, and interestingly was ordained a priest in the 1950s (the result of his wartime experiences, perhaps?). It seems distinctly possible that he had been the owner of the portrait before it passed to his sister...or perhaps it only came into her possession after the death of Cyril’s widow Doreen in 1989. They seem to have had at least one son (born before 1942), though I haven’t yet tried to pin down who that might be – it’s *much* harder with Scottish records than with English, as the birth index does not give a mother’s maiden name.

Osmund Bullock,

Cyril Martin stayed in the regular army after WWII, his temporary Lt Col rank becoming substantive in May 1947. He finally retired in July 1950, having first received a commission into the RE in Dec 1921. His last overseas posting was to Malaya in 1948/49, and from passenger records I've managed to identify his two sons (our donor's nephews). I've just written to the elder to see if he can throw light on any of this - he was born just before the war but seems to be still pretty active. For privacy reasons I won't give further details here, but will of course pass on any response.

Just to throw a historical pebble into the pond: Pitcairn Island (last refuge of the 'Bounty' mutineers from January 1790) was named by Philip Carteret of HM sloop 'Swallow' in 1767 after Midshipman Robert Pitcairn, who was the masthead lookout who first sighted it during that voyage. His father, John Pitcairn, was at the time a Major in the (later Royal) Marines. Given the service longevity of some forces families -often with members both by land and sea -it would be worth noting if this is spotted anywhere as one such link.

Osmund Bullock,

I’ve just found a press photo of Andrew Pitcairn and his wife Goda at their wedding in August 1938. He looks considerably older than he does in our portrait – so much so that for a while I thought it might actually be his father-in-law. See attached. But the shot must be (as described) of the happy couple leaving the church, preceded in traditional style by a piper, not her arrival; and as the side-by-side comparison I also attach shows, it is clearly the same man – he’s just lost much of his hair, and put on a fair bit of weight.

In view of this I think our portrait – or the photo on which it is probably based – is more likely to date from c.1930 or even earlier.

Jacinto Regalado,

The newspaper photo, or its reproduction, is poor enough that it may be misleading. It seems overexposed and may suggest more balding than there was (especially top center). As for the weight, he hardly looks stout or corpulent to me in the full-length view. He may be somewhat older in the photo, but probably not that much--and then there is the question of how reliable the painted image is, as it may be the equivalent of an air-brushed or cosmetically improved version of another photo.

Osmund Bullock,

OK...well, we'll just have to agree to differ on our conclusions about all that.

Kieran Owens,

Well done Osmund, that is a super find and very clearly the receding hairline in the photo definitely places him, as depicted in the portrait, at a (much) earlier date. Eight years or more can play havoc on a man's youthful locks and look. However, his smiley face is not much changed. A c.1930 portrait potentially knocks 2nd Earl Haig out of contention, as he would have been circa twelve, though if a prodigy it might be possible, especially as the portrait is rather simple/naive. Equally, it could have been painted later than the date of any photograph upon which it might be based.

Osmund Bullock,

Thank you, Kieran. I was already doubting the Haig hypothesis, and this certainly doesn't help it.

Jacinto, I don't disagree with either of the points you make, and had already noted them myself; but they don't shift my perception of his age/appearance as much as they do yours.

As the last contribution to this discussion was made over a year ago, I suggest we conclude it unless anyone has anything further to add. It has been noted that the portrait may be by an amateur artist, so it could be very difficult to make an attribution.

To summarise the findings:

Nobody has been able to identify the artist from the monogram, which may read ‘HG’ or ‘GH’. However, a photograph of Major Andrew Alexander Pitcairn (1901-1941) taken on his wedding day in 1938 confirms the identity of the sitter, as it is a clear likeness. The painting appears to show a younger man, so may date from c.1930 or be based on a photograph from this date. It has been suggested that the painter could have been a fellow soldier encountered by Pitcairn overseas, or a Scottish artist, as Pitcairn spent much of the 1930s in Edinburgh and Perth.

One suggestion is that the artist could be George Haig, 2nd Earl Haig (1918-2009), who was related to Pitcairn by marriage, may have crossed paths with him overseas, and who became a professional artist after the Second World War. However, the monogram does not match Haig’s known signatures and monogram, and Haig would have been too young if the portrait was painted in c.1930.

There is an Aitken Dott & Son label on the back of the frame with a reference number. It is possible that more information about the portrait could be found in the firm’s archives, some of which are in the National Library of Scotland.

The painting was donated to The Black Watch Castle & Museum by Katherine Ruth Fane Martin (1896-1996), who was from a military family from Edinburgh. Her brother, Major (acting Lt Col) Cyril James Mackenzie Martin, was a close contemporary of Pitcairn, and was an officer at the siege of Tobruk, in which Pitcairn was killed. It has been suggested that Cyril might have owned the portrait before his sister.

Thank you to all who contributed.

Thank you, Catherine. This discussion will close after one week (by 10th March), unless significant new information emerges in the meantime.