Ashley Cowie shows Scottish Television presenters Vicky Kay and Michelle McManus the painting that inspired

his 2009 book, The Rosslyn Templar.

The Other Rosslyn Templar

An illuminating comparison of R.T McPhersons mysterious 1836 painting with a similar painting of the same subject
By Jeff Nisbet

n my 2010 critique of The Rosslyn Templar, Ashley Cowies book about Robert Turnbull McPhersons mysterious 1836 painting of a Templar Knight in Rosslyn Chapel, I presented evidence that McPhersons painting was not, as Cowie asserts, executed inside the chapel by an artist of merit, but was instead executed in front of a huge painted backdrop of the chapel interior, originally intended for display in Edinburghs Diorama, a popular visual entertainment of the day, when McPherson was a humble student at Robert Gibbs art school. I also presented McPherson authority Alistair Crawfords definitive proof that McPherson, in contradiction of the nebulous figure that Cowie portrays in his book, later became known as The Photographer of Rome. At the close of that critique, I hinted that a followup article would argue that a fixed photographic reference of the chapel had been supplied to Diorama inventor Louis Daguerre at least fifteen years before the announcement of his daguerreotype process in 1839, which has become the commonly accepted date for the birth of photography.

But that rather large and ambitious project will have to wait, for now, while we return to a problem of considerable importance that I was unable to resolve by deadline. I had expressed great interest in a second painting of the same subject, shown to Cowie by respected Templar authority Robert Brydon. Unfortunately, Cowie wrote in his book, it was not possible to obtain a copy of this second painting to reproduce. I have since received a copy of that painting. The copy -a black and white scan of a small reproduction that appeared in one of Brydons now-out-of-print booklets -- is of admittedly poor quality. Regardless, it is sufficiently detailed to show that the reality of the painting is a far cry from Cowies description of it, and it is now possible to compare the one to the other in illuminating detail. On page 42 of his book, Cowie asserts that the character of the Templar in the second painting is far more prominent and takes up most of the space in the painting. The only architectural detail common to both paintings is the

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com

Left: R. T. McPhersons 1836 painting, Templar Knight at Roslin Chapel. Right: Similar but unsigned painting of the same date.

Apprentice Pillar. The only other feature common to both paintings is the skull on the table. Lets now examine Cowies three assertions. 1. That the Templar is far more prominent and takes up most of the space in the painting. By comparing the two reproductions shown above, it will be immediately apparent that this is not the case. Neither of the Templars is significantly more or less prominent than the other, and neither takes up most of the space in their respective paintings. 2. That the only architectural detail common to both paintings is the Apprentice Pillar. The evidence of your own eyes will confirm that Cowie has neglected to mention other architectural details common to both paintings. There are the stained-glass windows, for example, and the similarly tiled floor -- details I will return to, later. 3. That the only other feature common to both paintings is the skull on the table. Although not as weighty in McPhersons painting, there nevertheless appears to be a book lying next to the skull, an identical heraldic crest above the apprentice pillar, and banners hanging to the pillars left in the second painting. Clearly, Cowies description of the painting presented to him by Robert Brydon falls far short of the mark. In fact, the reality of the painting shown here is so spectacularly at odds with Cowies description that one begins to wonder if Cowie was describing yet a third similar painting. Indeed, if the painting had been printed in any source other than Brydons

own booklet, we might even be tempted to give Cowies powers of observation the benefit of the doubt. But it wasnt, so we cant. Why would Cowie so radically misrepresent the compositional elements in this other painting? Could it be that one of the main selling points of his book -- that McPhersons painting is the only (and earliest) tangible evidence of a connection between the chapel and the Templars -- hung from a thread so slender that the mere existence of the second painting threatened to break it? That Templar authority Robert Brydon was the person who alerted Cowie to the painting would have obliged Cowie, himself a modern Knight Templar, to mention it in his book, but obviously did not oblige him to describe it either correctly or at any greater length than he did, so he didnt. An even earlier painting showing Templars in Rosslyn Chapel, Louis Daguerres own 1824 Interior of Rosslyn Chapel, Cowie completely ignores. Cowies remarkable talent for cherry picking his evidence, allowing him to jump directly from point A to point D without first considering points B and C, might be marginally forgivable if he had not criticized that same lack of investigative rigour in others. But he has, so it isnt. Brydons booklet was printed in the 1990s, several years before the National Gallery of Scotlands celebrated 2002 exhibition of Rosslyn-related artworks contemporary with the two paintings, so Brydons own opinion that the second painting showed the chapel in private use would have been uninformed by later pictorial evidence. Artworks executed

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com

Top Left: Detail from a 1st-degree Masonic tracing board. Bottom Left: Detail from in a 2nd-degree tracing board. Right: Detail from McPhersons painting.

both before and after these two painting show that the chapel floor was not tiled in the manner depicted in the paintings, that there was no stained glass in the windows, and that there was no down staircase to the left of the Apprentice Pillar. But Cowie, in 2009, knows better and, to be fair, says so in his book. His greatest failing, besides his astonishingly false description of the second painting, is to never consider the possibility that the Templar was posing in any place other than the interior of Rosslyn Chapel. While Cowie admits to the contradictions in the artistic record vis a vis the two paintings under discussion, he is content to put these down to possible artistic license, a wise caveat put to him by Robert Cooper, Curator of Edinburghs Grand Lodge of Scotland Library and Museum. Further mitigating the historical value of the second painting, Cowie floats the possibility that it was perhaps a copy of the first. Clearly, Cowie knew he was standing on shaky ground. Indeed, while on the same page that he describes the painting shown to him by Brydon, he downplays the importance of the Templars possible identity by writing that the question of the identity of the man in the painting is not nearly as interesting as where he is, and what surrounds him. McPhersons painting offers viewers an artistic voyage into the architectural genius of Rosslyn Chapel. Unless, of course, what surrounds him is no more than a painted backdrop of the chapel that was hanging in an Edinburgh art class when McPherson was a student there. While my first critique of The Rosslyn Templar suggests

the high probability that this is, in fact, the case, let us now see how a comparison of both paintings might bring more evidence to the table. Lets begin with the tiled floor ... Both paintings show similar tiling, although McPhersons shows a greater command of the laws of perspective, one of the advertised disciplines taught in Robert Gibbs art class. Cowie writes that black and white chequered floors are a primary dynamic within all Freemasonic Temples, and presents examples of the floors shown on both first- and seconddegree tracing boards (masonic teaching aids). He describes McPhersons floor as having white octagons with curved edges, with black squares with indented edges inset, similar to the design of the second degree tracing board. While rudimentary geometry dictates that octagons and squares cannot, by definition, have curved or indented edges, it should be clear to the reader that the tile pattern in both Templar paintings is not based on either the square or the octagon. It is, instead, based on the circle. Nevertheless, if we feel that both painters were largely painting what they saw, then they both recorded the black and white circle-based tiling because it was there -- the actual floor of the art class in which the Rosslyn Chapel backdrop was hung. And as for the stone staircase that does not appear in any other artwork of the chapel either before or after McPhersons rendition -- it would be part of the architectural fabric of Robert Gibbs art school, too. It would be far less expensive to adapt the backdrop to the room than the room

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com

Top : Details from the two Rosslyn Templars, both dated 1836. Bottom: Window details from two David Roberts paintings, dated 1830 (left) and 1848 (right).

to the backdrop, especially if the floor and the stairs led to someplace important to the students -- like the way home. But there is much more that can be inferred from a close comparison of the two similar paintings than what they have in common. Further conclusions can be drawn from the elements that one artist includes that the other does not. If, as I am convinced, the large painted backdrop was an accurate representation of the actual chapel interior during the first half of the 19th century, then the stained glass in the windows was added by the students as a class exercise. That they could have had no pattern to follow in the backdrop is shown by the fact that both students paint the windows differently. And while McPhersons windows are more finely executed, the other student paints the framework of the windows with more fidelity. McPherson, the better artist, decides to change the framing of the upper part of the stained glass windows into a rather four-leaf clover design, perhaps to make the play of light more dramatic. The lesser artist paints the framing as it actually was -- a Sinclair Engrailed Cross tilted to an X orientation, like the St. Andrews Cross. This latter detail is shown in paintings executed both before and after 1836, the year both Rosslyn Templar paintings are dated to.
END

Finally, it is evident that McPherson has decided to exclude from his painting the only architectural element of the chapel interior that displays a carved inscription, perhaps because it would interfere with the framing esthetics of his Templars head. That the lesser painter decides to leave that element in, once again shows that the second painting could not have been, as Cowie suggests in his book, a copy of McPhersons. That architectural element is the horizontal architrave, or stone beam, connecting the capital of the Apprentice Pillar with the south wall of the chapel. The inscription (1 Esdras 3: 10-12) reads F o rte est vinu. Fortior est rex. Fort i o res sunt mulieres: sup om vincit veritas, and is translated as Wine is strong. The king is stronger. Women are stronger still: but truth conquers all. The builder of Rosslyn Chapel knew, it seems, that halfbaked symbology and slipshod research will not stand the test of time, and that the quest for truth requires a certain commitment to personal honesty and honour, as all good Templars should know. With one year as star of the SyFy channels Legend Quest under Cowies belt, and many more years of symbology yet to market, let us pray he learns that lesson rather sooner than later.

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com