The Golden Hour: The west staircase to the upper terrace at Balcaskie, Fife

The 'Golden Hour' is the last hour of sunlight during the day. Painted during the last year of the Great War, his picture is consequently a hymn to Peace. It was painted at Balcaskie in Fife, close to Kellie Castle, where the Lorimer family lived from May till October each year. The celebrated architect, Sir Robert Lorimer, the artist's younger brother, considered Balcaskie 'the ideal of what a Scottish gentleman's home ought to be' (Architectural Review 1899). Its gardens and vistas were aligned to the Bass Rock, across the Firth of Forth, and were initially inspired by the Baroque gardens of seventeenth-century France.