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Scottish Art - Paintings of Scotland:
Cawdor Castle Gardens

by D. Bruce Bennett

Cawdor Castle Gardens

Gathering rain clouds high above Cawdor Castle show a clear - though sunless - day. A sunless day? In northern Scotland? What a surprise.

(Click for larger view of Cawdor Castle Gardens.)

Sited at the far corner of Cawdor Castle Gardens, Bruce has captured the few flowers still in bloom in this early-September picture of Scotland - before the trees turn and at a time when the garden is past its showy days of summer.

He's chosen to give the most attention and detail to a few flowers in dead-center foreground of the walled garden and the castle keep just beyond it, but has left everything else rather to the imagination. A boxy yew hedge to the far right helps define the garden perimeter in this calming picture of Scotland.

The central focus of this Scottish Art is the oldest part of Cawdor Castle - the keep or central tower. Depending on who's doing the telling, most say it was built in 1372. Probably the only castle in the world to have been built around a living tree, its original founder (Thane William) allowed a dream - rather than an architect - to tell him where to build.

He was told in a dream to load up a donkey with gold and build his castle where the donkey stopped. If he built on that exact spot, he'd always have plenty of gold. The donkey, so they say (with a very straight face), stopped under this very tree, not far from the current village of Nairn in Invernesshire. Called a "thorn tree" for years, recent radiocarbon measurement tells us it's a holly - a very dead one, but a holly, nevertheless.

One other bit of lore is the supposed connection with Shakespeare's Macbeth, which is quite impossible, Macbeth having been born in 1005, long before the keep was built. As you can well imagine, every Thane of Cawdor since Shakespeare has had to deal with this not-so-urban myth. In fact, one of them is rumored to have said, "I wish the Bard had never written his damned play!" Well . . . that's what they say.

And we're saying that this lovely original Scottish Art, dominated by shades of green, might look quite engaging in your "castle," once you've chosen exactly the mat and frame to complement it and your décor. And just forget all that "double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble" bit. It's a quite pleasant castle and walled garden, as you can see for yourself.

Cawdor Castle Gardens Picture of Scotland
Medium: acrylic on 300#, cold-pressed watercolor paper
Image Dimensions: 20" w. x 16" h.
Mat: none
Glass: none
Frame: none

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