Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com1

T he O t h er R o s s l yn Te m p l a rAn illuminating comparison of R.T M c P h e r s o n ’s mysterious

1836 painting with a similar painting of the same subjectBy Jeff Nisbet

Ashley Cowie shows Scottish Television presenters Vicky Kay and Michelle McManus the painting that inspired his 2009 book, The Rosslyn Templar.

In my 2010 critique of The Rosslyn Te m p l a r, A s h l e yC o w i e ’s book about Robert Turnbull McPherson’s myste-rious 1836 painting of a Templar Knight in Rosslyn

Chapel, I presented evidence that McPherson’s painting wasnot, as Cowie asserts, executed inside the chapel by “an artistof merit,” but was instead executed in front of a huge paintedbackdrop of the chapel interior, originally intended for dis-play in Edinburg h ’s Diorama, a popular visual entertainmentof the day, when McPherson was a humble student at RobertG i b b ’s art school. I also presented McPherson authorityAlistair Crawford’s definitive proof that McPherson, in con-tradiction of the nebulous figure that Cowie portrays in hisbook, later became known as “The Photographer of Rome.”

At the close of that critique, I hinted that a followup arti-cle would argue that a “fixed” photographic reference of thechapel had been supplied to Diorama inventor LouisDaguerre at least fifteen years before the announcement ofhis daguerreotype process in 1839, which has become thecommonly accepted date for the birth of photography.

But that rather large and ambitious project will have towait, for now, while we return to a problem of considerableimportance that I was unable to resolve by deadline.

I had expressed great interest in a second painting of thesame subject, shown to Cowie by respected Templar authori-ty 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 appearedin one of Brydon’s now-out-of-print booklets -- is of admit-tedly poor quality. Regardless, it is sufficiently detailed toshow that the reality of the painting is a far cry from Cowie’sdescription of it, and it is now possible to compare the one tothe other in illuminating detail.

On page 42 of his book, Cowie asserts that the character ofthe Templar in the second painting “is far more prominentand takes up most of the space in the painting. The onlyarchitectural detail common to both paintings is the

Apprentice Pillar. The only other feature common to bothpaintings is the skull on the table.”

Let’s now examine Cowie’s 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 ofthe Templars is significantly more or less prominent than theother, and neither takes up most of the space in their respec-tive paintings.

2. That “the only architectural detail common to bothpaintings is the Apprentice Pillar.”

The evidence of your own eyes will confirm that Cowie hasneglected to mention other architectural details common toboth paintings. There are the stained-glass windows, for exam-ple, and the similarly tiled floor -- details I will return to, later.

3. That “the only other feature common to both paintingsis the skull on the table.”

Although not as weighty in McPherson’s painting, therenevertheless appears to be a book lying next to the skull, anidentical heraldic crest above the apprentice pillar, and ban-ners hanging to the pillar’s left in the second painting.

Clearly, Cowie’s description of the painting presented tohim by Robert Brydon falls far short of the mark. In fact, thereality of the painting shown here is so spectacularly at oddswith Cowie’s description that one begins to wonder if Cowiewas describing yet a third similar painting. Indeed, if thepainting had been printed in any source other than Brydon’s

own booklet, we might even be tempted to give Cowie’spowers of observation the benefit of the doubt. But it wasn’t,so we can’t.

Why would Cowie so radically misrepresent the composi-tional elements in this other painting? Could it be that one ofthe main selling points of his book -- that McPherson’s paint-ing is the only (and earliest) tangible evidence of a connectionbetween the chapel and the Templars -- hung from a thread soslender that the mere existence of the second painting threat-ened to break it? That Templar authority Robert Brydon wasthe person who alerted Cowie to the painting would haveobliged Cowie, himself a modern Knight Te m p l a r, to mentionit in his book, but obviously did not oblige him to describe iteither correctly or at any greater length than he did, so he did-n ’t. An even earlier painting showing Templars in RosslynChapel, Louis Daguerre’s own 1824 Interior of RosslynC h a p e l, Cowie completely ignores.

Cowie’s remarkable talent for cherry picking his evidence,allowing him to jump directly from point A to point D with-out first considering points B and C, might be marginally for-givable if he had not criticized that same lack of investigativerigour in others. But he has, so it isn’t.

Brydon’s booklet was printed in the 1990s, several yearsbefore the National Gallery of Scotland’s celebrated 2002exhibition of Rosslyn-related artworks contemporary withthe two paintings, so Brydon’s own opinion that the secondpainting showed the chapel “in private use” would have beenuninformed by later pictorial evidence. Artworks executed

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com2

Left: R. T. McPherson’s 1836 painting, Templar Knight at Roslin Chapel. Right: Similar but unsigned painting of the same date.

both before and after these two painting show that the chapelfloor was not tiled in the manner depicted in the paintings,that there was no stained glass in the windows, and that therewas no down staircase to the left of the Apprentice Pillar. ButCowie, in 2009, knows better and, to be fair, says so in hisbook. His greatest failing, besides his astonishingly falsedescription of the second painting, is to never consider thepossibility that the Templar was posing in any place otherthan the interior of Rosslyn Chapel.

While Cowie admits to the contradictions in the artisticrecord vis a vis the two paintings under discussion, he is con-tent to put these down to possible “artistic license,” a wisecaveat put to him by Robert Cooper, Curator of Edinburgh’sGrand Lodge of Scotland Library and Museum. Further mit-igating the historical value of the second painting, Cowiefloats 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 paintingshown to him by Brydon, he downplays the importance ofthe Templar’s possible identity by writing that “the questionof the identity of the man in the painting is not nearly asinteresting as where he is, and what surrounds him. McPhers-on’s painting offers viewers an artistic voyage into the archi-tectural genius of Rosslyn Chapel.”

Unless, of course, “what surrounds him” is no more than apainted backdrop of the chapel that was hanging in an Edin-burgh 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 nowsee how a comparison of both paintings might bring moreevidence to the table.

Let’s begin with the tiled floor ...Both paintings show similar tiling, although McPherson’s

shows a greater command of the laws of “perspective,” oneof the advertised disciplines taught in Robert Gibb’s art class.

Cowie writes that “black and white chequered floors are aprimary dynamic within all Freemasonic Temples,” and pre-sents examples of the floors shown on both first- and second-degree tracing boards (masonic teaching aids). He describesMcPherson’s floor as having “white octagons with curvededges, with black squares with indented edges inset, similarto the design of the second degree tracing board.”

While rudimentary geometry dictates that octagons andsquares cannot, by definition, have “curved” or “indentededges,” it should be clear to the reader that the tile pattern inboth Templar paintings is not based on either the square or theoctagon. It is, instead, based on the circle.

Nevertheless, if we feel that both painters were largelypainting what they saw, then they both recorded the blackand white circle-based tiling because it was there -- the actu-al floor of the art class in which the Rosslyn Chapel backdropwas hung. And as for the stone staircase that does not appearin any other artwork of the chapel either before or after Mc-Pherson’s rendition -- it would be part of the architecturalfabric of Robert Gibb’s art school, too. It would be far lessexpensive to adapt the backdrop to the room than the room

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com3

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

to the backdrop, especially if the floor and the stairs led tosomeplace important to the students -- like the way home.

But there is much more that can be inferred from a closecomparison of the two similar paintings than what they havein common. Further conclusions can be drawn from the ele-ments that one artist includes that the other does not.

If, as I am convinced, the large painted backdrop was anaccurate representation of the actual chapel interior duringthe first half of the 19th century, then the stained glass in thewindows was added by the students as a class exercise. Thatthey could have had no pattern to follow in the backdrop isshown by the fact that both students paint the windows dif-ferently. And while McPherson’s windows are more finelyexecuted, the other student paints the framework of the win-dows with more fidelity.

McPherson, the better artist, decides to change the framingof the upper part of the stained glass windows into a ratherfour-leaf clover design, perhaps to make the play of lightmore dramatic. The lesser artist paints the framing as it actu-ally was -- a Sinclair Engrailed Cross tilted to an “X” orien-tation, like the St. Andrew’s Cross. This latter detail is shownin paintings executed both before and after 1836, the yearboth Rosslyn Templar paintings are dated to.

F i n a l l y, it is evident that McPherson has decided to excludefrom his painting the only architectural element of the chapelinterior that displays a carved inscription, perhaps because itwould interfere with the framing esthetics of his Te m p l a r’shead. That the lesser painter decides to leave that element in,once again shows that the second painting could not havebeen, as Cowie suggests in his book, a copy of McPherson’s .

That architectural element is the horizontal architrave, orstone beam, connecting the capital of the Apprentice Pillarwith the south wall of the chapel.

The inscription (1 Esdras 3: 10-12) reads “ F o rte est vinu.F o rtior est rex. Fort i o res sunt mulieres: sup om vincit veri-t a s , ” and is translated as “ Wine is strong. The king is stro n g e r.Women are stronger still: but truth conquers all.”

The builder of Rosslyn Chapel knew, it seems, that half-baked “symbology” and slipshod research will not stand thetest of time, and that the quest for “truth” requires a certaincommitment to personal honesty and honour, as all goodTemplars should know.

With one year as star of the SyFy channel’s Legend Questunder Cowie’s belt, and many more years of “symbology”yet to market, let us pray he learns that lesson rather soonerthan later.

Copyright October 2011 by Jeff Nisbet / www.mythomorph.com4

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

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