The latest exhibition in the University’s Lamb Gallery explores the fascinating artwork of Nell Baxter and her connection with the Celtic Revival in Edinburgh and Dundee in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For many years Nell Baxter was little more than a footnote in Scottish art history. Her name was often mentioned along with Helen Hay, Anne Mackie and others as one of the group of women who worked with Dundee-born artist John Duncan on the various Celtic Revival projects that he undertook for polymath Patrick Geddes in Edinburgh, but beyond that, little was known about her.
Now a treasure trove of some 400 original drawings and design sketches by Baxter has been unearthed by her descendants and gifted to the University of Dundee Museums, casting new light on Baxter’s life and career.
Helen Baxter (soon nicknamed Nellie) was born in Dundee in 1874, the third of four daughters born to Crichton and Ann Baxter of Bucklemaker Wynd (then about to be redeveloped as Victoria Road, where the family continued to live). Crichton inherited the family business of George H Baxter & Son, textile manufacturers specialising in jute sacking. It was a small-scale concern compared to the huge factories nearby but provided a comfortable living and allowed Crichton time to develop his many other interests – he was known as an expert in chess and was described by the Evening Telegraph as “a poet, painter, and musician”. These interests were clearly passed on to his daughters – his eldest girl Ann became a talented musician and played piano accompaniment for silent films at the Kinnaird Picture House before becoming active in Labour politics. Meanwhile, Nellie and her younger sister Rosa (born 1876) developed their love of art.
Crichton died aged just 51 in 1881 but left his family well provided for. Nellie attended the High School then Harris Academy, where she also took evening classes in art. She won various prizes there and in 1892 became the first woman to win a prize in the Dundee Institute of Architecture’s drawing competition.
The circumstances that took her to Edinburgh to work with John Duncan are unknown. She was at school with Duncan’s sister Jessie and may well have met Duncan himself at meetings of the Dundee Art Club in the 1880s. Either way, by 1895 she was based in Edinburgh studying Celtic ornament and design at the Old Edinburgh School of Art run by Duncan and founded by his mentor Patrick Geddes.
Geddes was Professor of Botany at University College Dundee but the post was a part-time one, allowing him plenty of time to develop other projects, particularly in Edinburgh where he was pursuing his own cultural agenda, the ‘Celtic Renascence’, with John Duncan as his principal ally. In 1892, Duncan joined Geddes in Edinburgh as director of a new kind of art school, intended by Geddes “to plant the sure and certain hope of the resuscitation of beauty possible before every eye… to bring beauty into the interior of every home.” The school concentrated on the decorative arts and from 1895 it included an elementary class in Celtic Ornament, taught by Duncan assisted by Helen Hay. Nellie Baxter was evidently an enthusiastic student in this class.
One important client for the school was the Dunfermline linen manufacturer Henry Beveridge, who produced damasks to patterns created there. Designs for these by Duncan, Hay and Baxter were exhibited at the school in 1896 along with linoleum designs by Baxter intended for a Kirkcaldy firm. Other commissions that Baxter undertook at this time included a seal for the School of Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh and a bed spread for a masonic bazaar – sketches for both of these are included in the collection.
However, Geddes also had a more local project in mind – a series of murals and other forms of decorative art for his Ramsay Garden complex by the Castle Esplanade, where the school was based. Duncan began creating murals for Ramsay Garden early in 1893 and Baxter joined him in 1895-6 to create decorative borders for a series of six large panels that Duncan painted for the Common Room of Ramsay Garden’s student halls. While the paintings themselves survive today, the borders were long ago painted over, so the various designs for them that have come to light in this collection are particularly interesting, not least because they include written comments by Duncan critiquing her work. On one he added “Naughty Miss Baxter!”, complaining that she had repeated a fault he had corrected before.
Another of the key components of the Celtic Revival was The Evergreen (1895-7), a seasonal publication in four issues. John Duncan was its main artistic contributor and he directed Baxter and other students at the Old Edinburgh School of Art to create numerous head and tail pieces. Our collection includes pencil sketches on tracing paper for many of these striking graphic compositions. They not only reveal an understanding of Celtic design but also international influences, including contemporary German, French and Japanese art, and some of the bold, geometric designs seem to anticipate the Art Deco style of a quarter of a century later.
With the last issue of The Evergreen in circulation in early 1897, Duncan decided to return to Dundee. Although he remained devoted to Geddes, it was clear that money for further projects was drying up, and the Old Edinburgh School of Art could not be sustained. Baxter chose to follow him and now devoted herself to creating decorative and applied art in Dundee. Duncan quickly attracted a group of young artists – mostly women – keen to develop their talents. He also began teaching again, starting with a class in Celtic ornament at the Dundee YMCA in 1898.
It’s worth noting that Dundee had already developed an enthusiasm for all things Celtic. During the 19th century a large number of Highlanders had moved to the city to find work in the jute mills, so there was a significant Gaelic-speaking population. Various societies existed to cater for their interests, including the Dundee Celtic Club, the Dundee Gaelic Musical Association and the Dundee Association of True Highlanders, later rebranded as Dundee Highland Society. There was also a growing interest in decorative art, demonstrated by the popularity of a major exhibition of Home Industries held in the Victoria Art Galleries in 1891.
Duncan’s attempts to bring these two interests together therefore came at the right time, and the first efforts of his new group of Dundee artists and designers were shown in 1898 at the annual exhibition of the Graphic Arts Association (GAA), the city’s main professional art society. Baxter (now calling herself Nell rather than Nellie) showed three works, and her sister Rosa made her exhibition debut alongside her.
The success of these pieces and others led to the GAA trying out an “ornamental section” in its next exhibition. This proved to be their most ambitious thus far, extending into a second room and, more importantly, making a profit for the first time. The Evening Telegraph noted the “attention and admiration” given to the “embroideries, needlework, and art decoration contributed by Mr John Duncan’s pupils”. As well as Nell and Rosa Baxter, the group included George Dutch Davidson (who shared a studio with Duncan in Albert Square), Elizabeth Burt, Margaret Cunningham, Edith Hamilton, Annie Moon and Duncan’s sister Jessie (now Mrs Westbrook). Perhaps the most outstanding talent of the group, Davidson designed various pieces of embroidery which were worked by Burt and Rosa Baxter, and a complex love triangle seems to have developed between the three of them. Davidson’s death at the age of just 21 resolved the problem in the most tragic way. Burt herself died two years later; Rosa never married.
Nell exhibited a wide range of embroidery designs around this time, including a tea cosy, a piano front, two book covers and one blotter cover – sketches for many of these survive in the collection. In 1900 she also assisted Duncan with a mural commission for Lord Dean of Guild Paul for the library of his house on Magdalen Yard Road. Soon after this, two significant events occurred – Duncan left Dundee to take up a teaching position in Chicago; and Nell got married to schoolteacher John W Kippen.
Kippen was born in 1862 in Crieff, where he began his teaching career. He came to Dundee in 1885 as an assistant at Harris Academy, moving to Blackness Public School as second master in 1889. He also attended evening classes at the Harris and was there at the same time as Nell, so the two may have met for the first time then. In 1890, however, Kippen married Annie Sutherland and in 1894 they had a daughter, Katherine. Tragedy struck, however, when Annie died in February 1899 of endocarditis.
Kippen was then living at Retreat Cottage in Albert Street, Tayport. Nell at the time was staying with her mother and sister Rosa not far away at Mercury Cottage on Newport Road. It was there that the marriage took place in July 1900. Most husbands at that time would have demanded that their wives give up any career they might have had, but Kippen seems to have been happy for Nell to continue with her art, though presumably less keen on the abbreviation of her name – from now on she exhibited as Helen Kippen.
Determined not to let Duncan’s departure atrophy the decorative art movement, in 1900 the Graphic Arts Association established a special Decorative Art Section to which both Helen and Rosa contributed regularly. But while arts and crafts work continued to be well represented in Dundee, its connection to the Celtic Revival gradually diminished. Although the incorporation of Celtic motifs into the decorative art of the Baxters and others had always been praised, the Celtic-infused symbolist paintings of artists such as Stewart Carmichael and Alec Grieve often infuriated the critics. The Dundee Advertiser savaged the GAA’s 1900 exhibition, complaining of “too much… pseudo-Kelticism.”
Many artists and designers soon abandoned the Celtic influence and moved on to other styles, but Helen Kippen continued to base her work on Celtic imagery for many years to come. Her exhibited work in the 1900s included a shaving case, a casement curtain and a fire screen. In 1905 she and her sister (now exhibiting as Rose rather than Rosa) collaborated on an embroidered panel, The Fairies, inspired by a poem by William Allingham that was included in Geddes’s Lyra Celtica. Several preparatory sketches for this survive in the collection. Another important work, shown in 1909 and again in 1911, was a “decorative drawing” inspired by a Percy Shelley poem – “That orbéd maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the Moon”; again sketches for this survive.
She was also still undertaking commissioned work – examples include a prize certificate for the Kirkcaldy Home Arts & Industries Association’s 1906 exhibition and a badge for the Conifer Club in 1908. One particularly striking illustration that may date from this period is a tea cosy design in predominantly green and purple colours. In 1908, green, purple and white were adopted by the Women’s Social and Political Union as symbolic of the suffrage movement. It may be a coincidence and there’s no evidence of Helen becoming a militant suffragette, but she is known to have attended a women’s suffrage meeting at University College in 1906. In 1897 she had also been commissioned to produce a series of illustrations of ladies with bicycles, an important symbol of the increasing freedoms of the ‘New Woman’.
In 1905 the Kippens moved to The Homestead at 38 Grey St, Tayport, where John and Helen would spend the rest of their lives. Her husband’s career had continued to develop, latterly as Headmaster of Hawkhill School. Helen, meanwhile, continued as a member of Dundee Art Society (which the GAA was renamed in 1904) and was also on the council of Tayport Choral Society. Her exhibition appearances became less frequent, one notable example being a large painted design for an embroidered panel, Where Oxlips and the Nodding Violet Grows, shown in 1918 and now in The McManus.
In 1921, Helen and Rose’s mother Mrs Baxter died aged 84. A few years later, Rose left Mercury Cottage and moved in with her sister Alice (now widowed). Helen and Rose continued to collaborate (for example on a piece of embossed leather shown in 1930), though the critics recognised that their style was now increasingly old-fashioned. In 1927, for example, the Courier described a tablecloth by Rose as “Very charming… even if its tender, Burne Jones-like tones are overpowered by the higher note of the very modern embroidery” shown by others.
The last exhibited works by Helen identified thus far are a pair of book ends shown in 1934. By that time she was also a widow, her husband having died in 1927. She remained a member of Dundee Art Society for the rest of her life, but no later artworks are known by her. Of the four Baxter siblings she was the last to survive – Ann died in 1935, Rose in 1947 and Alice in 1951. Helen died in 1952, leaving her largest surviving work, The Fairies, to Dundee Art Society. Sadly, apart from her association with Duncan and Geddes in the 1890s, her work was then almost entirely forgotten. The discovery of this extraordinary collection of her designs and sketches allows us to reveal at least some of her exceptional talent and the many projects she worked on.
An exhibition showcasing the collection and placing it into the wider context of Dundee’s Celtic Revival is being held in the Lamb Gallery from 9 Nov 2024 – 8 February 2025.
Matthew Jarron, University of Dundee Museums