Kirkcudbright with its surrounding countryside is a gently enticing place. The story of its artists' colony is full of examples of artists arriving on a summer painting visit and staying on for the rest of their lives.

The reasons why Kirkcudbright attracted so many painters and became an artists' colony are not difficult to discern. It was, and remains, perhaps the most attractive small town in Scotland with impressive architecture. There is the High Street with its ancient Tollbooth and the 18th century town houses enlivened by their variously and sometimes eccentrically painted frontages, the myriad colours giving the street an exotic, almost continental, atmosphere. Between the houses are cobbled, crooked wynds, many of which contain artist's and craftsmen's studios. McLellan's Castle an imposing sixteenth century ruin in the middle of the town, dominates the skyline. When E.A.Taylor asked Hornel why he thought Kirkcudbright was so popular with artists he said, "Well, it's a fine old town and not too big, but big enough to keep you from vegetating."

Taylor, venturing his own answer to the question wrote that as well as being one of the most uniquely beautiful towns in Scotland, 'it is the nearness of unspoilt Nature that makes it the artist's paradise that it is... not many steps from your doorway the river, the sea pastoral lands, woodland rugged hills moorlands and glens are all within easy reach.' The widespread adoption of painting en plein air in the latter nineteenth century, influenced by French Impressionism, was also practiced earlier in Scotland by McCulloch, Bough and McTaggart, moving the artist out of his studio and into the open air, spending more time with his subject matter.

The other principal artists' colonies in Great Britain of the same period - Newlyn, Staithes and St. Ives - are all like Kirkcudbright, coastal towns with fishing fleets. The fishing industry is a clean, relatively non polluting, activity which creates an ever changing scene. The proximity of the sea gives a pellucid transparency, although the white light of St. Ives is very different from the softer light of the Solway. The coast -both to the east and the west of Kirkcudbright - enjoys some fascinating variety, from the small sandy coves with farmland gently inclining to the shore, to the dramatic rocky bays and cliffs as in James Faed's Ravenshall.

The most enduring imagery of the Kirkcudbright School involves the woods and woodland streams of Galloway, with cattle, as in the most influential painting of the School, Henry's Galloway Landscape. Other timeless images depict children and animals, for example Hornel's Galloway Idyll, its edgy atmosphere created by the slightly menacing goats watching the adolescent frolicking of the girls.

The variety of the landscape around Kirkcudbright, and the changing colour of the trees and vegetation with the seasons, was a rich source of subject matter for the painters. Most found it richly inspirational but there was the occasional dissenter. S.J. Peploe, writing to his wife in late spring of 1931, complained of the 'lush grass and green trees - you can see nothing for leaves - no distance, nothing for the imagination' and, a generation later, Donald Moodie, whenever a painting trip to Kirkcudbright was mooted, would refuse and groan 'too green, too green!' William Robson had completely the opposite reaction, often pointing out admiringly to his granddaughter 'all the wonderful greens'.

It is autumn, which one most associates with paintings of the Galloway landscape, most memorably in George Henry's magnificent painting of 1889. The gorgeous, and at that time shocking oranges and reds of Hornel's best period in the early 1 890s were a response to the autumn colouring he found around Kirkcudbright. The farmland was not intensively fanned; ancient woodlands and small copses grow next to undulating fields with gorse covered knolls bounded by unkempt hedges making for a land scape that is enchanting.

This 'green and golden province', as E.A.Taylor called Galloway, would not have attracted so many artists if it had not been relatively accessible. From 1864 under the aegis of the Glasgow and South Western Railway, Kirkcudbright had its own railway station and appropriately it was a terminus. It was not just a stop on the way to somewhere else, it was in fact the destination. Edinburgh and Glasgow, the two cities where the major exhibitions and the art dealers were to be found, could be reached in a few hours. Conversely, it became a much easier place to visit. Peploe, again writing to his wife in 1931, from the Selkirk Arms Hotel, complained, ' I would go mad if I bad to live here.' He did not have to because he made his frequent trips to Kirkcudbright from Edinburgh by train

During the decade and a half that Kirkcudbright became what was called the 'Glasgow School in the Country', most of the Glasgow Boys came to the south west to paint This would probably not have been the case if Hornel, who was one of the most important and artistically adventurous of their number, had not made Kirkcudbright his home. George Henry would return to Glasgow full of enthusiasm for the place and everyone could see, from the paintings that he and Hornel exhibited at home and abroad to such acclaim, what an intensely inspirational place Kirkcudbright must be.

Hornel, more convivial and nothing of the curmudgeon that he was later to become, was responsible for both the coterie of artists who made Kirkcudbright their home -MacGeorge, Mouncey, Blacklock and Hanna Clark amongst the - and the major artists who visited such as Henry, Guthrie, Gauld and W.Y. McGregor. Hornel was a charismatic and avant-garde figure in those days, acting as a magnet to Kirkcudbright in much the same way as Gauguin had been to Pont Aven.

The major catalyst for the arrival of artists in the Stewartry, and the general acceptance of the fact that the life of a painter could be a respectable and potentially lucrative career, was the phenomenon of the Faed family of Barlae Mill near Gatehouse of Fleet. The fact that they came from an unpretentious working family, with no apparent artistic leanings previously, must have made others aware that the art world was not just open to expensively educated middle class people from the cities.