Capturing the Light

By Susan Mansfield, 17.08.2026

Elsa McTaggart. Capturing the Light. Elsa McTaggart. Image Credit: Ralph Tonge.

More than 100 years after the artist William McTaggart walked the streets of Edinburgh, his life and work is being celebrated on the Edinburgh Fringe thanks to his great granddaughter. Singer-songwriter Elsa McTaggart has created Capturing the Light, which is part of the Made in Scotland showcase, to tell the story behind his work.

“His paintings capture Scotland’s atmosphere,” she says. “They’re always beautiful and always relevant. There hasn’t been a book or a big exhibition for a while, so I just feel it’s worth putting a reminder out there about who he is and what he achieved. A show will reach out to a new and younger audience, and hopefully inspire people to look at the work.”

McTaggart, who died in 1910, was one of the most innovative Scottish painters of the 19th century, known for applying the ideas and techniques of Impressionism to the Scottish landscape. His paintings evolved from portraits outdoors, often of children, into semi-abstract landscapes capturing weather and atmosphere, sea and sky.

Elsa says she hopes to share “the parts of the story people don’t know so much”. Like the fact that McTaggart’s family were Gaelic-speaking crofters from Kintyre, and though he moved to Edinburgh in his teens to study painting, he was always proud of that identity. The landscapes of Kintyre feature in some of his most important work.

Elsa researched his story in libraries and archives, and travelled to the places where he lived and painted, but she also includes in the show stories passed down in her family. “My dad’s side of the family is very extensive. William had 12 surviving children and I’m one of 11, when the family gets together, it’s often centred around something to do with McTaggart’s work. There was a big exhibition when I was about 12 or 13, and family came from all over the world.

“My great aunt - his daughter - said he was very absentminded, always thinking about his art. She said he once met his daughters in the street, but he was so caught up in what he was thinking that he just tipped his hat to them, as he would to any lady, bid them good morning and hurried on his way without having noticed that they were his own daughters. “He loved walking, but he didn’t like cars - modern technology was not his thing! He always used to carry a purple handkerchief, and when cars passed he would wave it their direction and cover his mouth. His family used to get great amusement out of that.”

She says that she realised that her own upbringing, though nearly 150 years later, was actually similar to McTaggart’s. “My parents were artists and they decided to survive off the land in Aberfeldy. We had no electricity until I was nine. My father was working with the horse and cart, scything the hay and butchering our own animals, mum was and bottling and storing the food for winter. I’ve realised how unusual that is, to have the same connections to nature that he had.”

As a musician, Elsa has staged a number of shows at the Fringe, but says Capturing the Light took her out of her comfort zone. “I have always done music shows, and I wrote an album which is the foundation of Capturing the Light, but the actual show itself is not about the music at all, it’s about storytelling and stage production.” As Elsa is based on the Isle of Lewis, she pleased to have made the show with Hebridean arts company sruth-mara and Lewis-based creatives, director Laura Cameron-Lewis and production designer Robbie Thomson, not to mention the various friends and neighbours who contributed their skills.

The show premiered at An Lanntair in Stornoway in July and will tour Scotland after the Fringe. “I am so proud of how it has come out. Everyone has brought so much to it, and what they’ve been able to bring has not taken away from what I’ve done, it has added more layers and brought it up to another level.”

She says she feels inspired by McTaggart, a principled man who always spoke out against hyprocrisy, or when he felt others had been wronged. While he supported his family as a portrait painter, he never lost sight of his ambition to paint in a new way.

“He pioneered a way of painting that had never been done at all. He went against the grain for many years to pursue something he could see but didn’t know how to achieve, he just kept challenging what he knew. He was a stubborn man, he was obviously convinced there was something he could achieve and just kept at it. “He was extremely proud of his heritage, and always refused to go to London, even though it would have been in his interests. I think he liked to go to places where he could still see the remnants of his childhood, the old ways of living off the land, which is the foundation of our culture. That’s something I like to do too - that’s another connection I have with him.”

Elsa McTaggart: Capturing the Light, on the Fringe at Big at the Space Triplex, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 August, 11.40am