ABSTRACT
During 1928, several events occurred which signalled the renewal of a nationalist momentum in Scotland. The one was the formation, by a small group of students and intellectuals, of the National Party of Scotland and less momentous but equally intriguing, was the completion of a painting entitled From Another Window in Thrums by the expatriate artist William McCance. The subject of A Window in Thrums is village life in rural Scotland, Thrums being the fictional name J. M. Barrie gave to his childhood home town of Kirriemuir. William Johnstone presents a kind of paradigm for the ambitious and radically minded Scottish artist in the inter-war period. The coincidence of McCance painting From Another Window in Thrums in 1928 and the formation of the National Party of Scotland in that year does not signal some mystical significance to that particular date. Tom Nairn is also suggesting that Scottish intellectual culture is strongly national, but is incapable of being nationalist.
