The McBey Story (continued)
Author Alasdair Soussi with McBey archive material
WHO WOULD HAVE imagined that one half of the 20th Century’s most glamorous artistic couples hailed from the Aberdeenshire village of Newburgh – or nearby Foveran in fact?
During March an hotel in Newburgh showed a tantalising exposé of work by the two of them. Only on for a short sweet moment, the show aimed to convey that McBey’s wife – Marguerite, whom he married in 1931, had an equally starring talented role in their fast track artistic life that saw them flit between Morrocco, the USA, Venice, the Middle East and France.
Just on for a weekend, the event marked their 95th wedding anniversary, and for the first time celebrated the artwork of Mcbey and his wife.
It showcased some 18 works of art created by the couple, from paintings and etchings to newspaper clippings to do with their lives.
An American heiress, Marguerite Loeb was 25 and he was 47 when they met at a dinner in Philadelphia, hosted by one of his galleries there.
They later married in London in 1931, at a dazzling event covered by the Evening Standard.
Born in 1887, McBey was the son of a single mother and, tragically, at the age of 13, he discovered her lying lifeless on her bed after she had taken her own life.
McBey went on to work as a bank clerk in Aberdeen, starting at the age of 15, studying art at evening classes at Gray’s. He even built his own printing press at home and produced some early prints himself. He became an official war artist in World War I and was posted first to Rouen and then to the Middle East. His dramatic prints of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign gained much attention.
The pair travelled relentlessly from USA to Morrocco to Italy – Venice – and made the most of James’s talent as a painter. He sold much of his work throughout the 20s. It was after McBey’s death in1959 that Marguerite began to paint herself.
One of the group organising the Newburgh show was Alasdair Soussi, who wrote the first biography of McBey, Shadows and Light, published in 2022. A journalist from Glasgow, Soussi was fascinated by the life of McBey when he first came across his work at an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London.
He noticed that the painting of TE Lawrence on disolay had this unusual signature “James McBey”, and his curiousity was stoked, as he thought it must be Scottish, and the idea for a book came to mind
Working on much of it during Covid, he has since kept in regular contact with the Aberdeen Art Gallery, where much of McBey’s archive is kept. He has also been instrumental in making McBey the artistic figurehead of Newburgh, and becoming his biggest champion – even helping to campaign for a road sign paying homage to the artist at the entrance to the village.
Now Soussi’s book may also be the subject of a Netflix show. “He kept everything and he recorded everything,” says Soussi. “His diaries are an absolute treasure trove, not least about his very complicated love life.” McBey had innumerable affairs before and after his marriage to his wife, Marguerite, details of which he recorded in code in his diary. A code, it turned out, that Marguerite had cracked.
“He would paint and draw his lovers and he certainly regarded them as muses, with all that that entails,” says Soussi. “But it should also be said that all the evidence points to these relationships not being just a one-way street and he maintained friendships and corresponded with many of his lovers for the rest of their lives.”
McBey, continued to visit home and maintained the Presbyterian faith of his childhood. He refused to work on Sundays throughout his career and in later years used his diary code to record not love affairs but instead messages praising and thanking God.
After her husband died in 1959, Marguerite reinvented herself as a watercolourist, capturing the same Moroccan light that had enthralled her husband. “The challenge of a medium which allows of no corrections drew me like a magnet,” she said.
She exhibited successfully in Tangier, New York, and London and outlived James by 40 years, dying in London on October 21, 1999 at the age of 94. She bequeathed many of his paintings to Aberdeen Art Gallery, endowing the McBey Art Reference Library there in 1961.
www.alasdairsoussi.com
TESSA WILLIAMS
