After serving in the Great War, Cadell returned to Iona with fellow painter and friend SJ Peploe every year from 1919 until 1932. Only requiring a small board for each sheet to be stretched, all his painting paraphernalia could be carried in a small bag as he went about the island. Any who have visited will attest any routes leaving the relative security of the machar are rough, rocky and dangerous, particularly around the North End. Here he has crossed the Island to the Atlantic coast, to Port Ban just north of the Bay at the Back of the Ocean. There is a deep, secluded bay and beautiful sandy beach divided by a rocky shoal in the centre. Cadell painted here many times including a well-known oil of the high rocky promontory behind the bay, the site of the iron age Dun Bhuirg. Here he has set up on the south of the bay on the tidal Eilan Didal looking north over the quiet waters of the best swimming beach on the island. The range of blues are highly characteristic, the waters reflecting the summer sky.
About F.C.B. Cadell
Cadell was born in Edinburgh in 1883 and from an early age, showed a precocious talent for art and was producing very capable watercolours and drawings in his early teens. Half French, he was taken to France and Munich by his mother for artistic education and some very fine, freely painted farmyard paintings date from this early period. Despite his sophistication, Cadell’s most natural habitat was the west Highlands, Iona in particular, and he made only a few painting trips to France after the War.
