Hardy doesn't begin to describe William McTaggart.

William's father was a cropper, a Scottish type of small farmer, on the Kintyre peninsula. The area had 30 whisky distilleries back then. McTaggart grew up outdoors, ocean all around, and a good drink within easy reach.

Like Raeburn and many others Scottish painters, McTaggart started with portraits. Easy money. But he developed into the anti-Raeburn. Rather than urban intellectuals and power mongers, McTaggart's prefered to paint tiny little common people, often fishermen or their families, caught in Scotland's epic coastal storms. Under those conditions, how he kept his painter stuff from flying off and spilling all over him we'll never know, but its no small accomplishment.

Also in contrast to Raeburn and many others, McTaggart couldn't deal with polite society and the gossip and self-promotion in Edinburgh, what we now call branding. To keep phonies, critics, and pretty much everyone else away, he moved south to the village of Bonnyrigg. That's Scottish for nice ridge, not nice 18 wheeler rig.

I can't agree with the local biographer who summarizes McTaggart's life as 'singularly uneventful.' Not only did he brave the elements to make his art, but his second marriage was to a woman 20 years younger, and he was mowed down by a steamer and almost drowned.