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The Dudley Watkins 'Crucifixion'

March 20, 2008

A 50-year-old painting of Christ’s Crucifixion by cartoonist Dudley D Watkins, creator of The Broons and Oor Wullie, has been discovered at a private house in Lochgelly in Fife.

It was given by the artist in 1951 to Mrs Jean Kinnell (77), who was then a young mother living with her husband’s family in Cowdenbeath.

She explained: “My father in law, James Kinnell, was a lay preacher with the Church of Christ in Cowdenbeath.

“Dudley and his wife often attended his services, and after church we would sit around the kitchen table discussing the Bible.

“One day he handed me a roll of cardboard and said ‘That’s for you, Jean’. The painting was in it.”

The ink and watercolour picture, which measures about 2 ft by 3 ft and has hung in Mrs Kinnell’s home for many years, came to light last month.

Gillian Parsons, the development officer with Arts & Theatres Fife at the Lochgelly Arts Centre, was preparing an exhibition of oil paintings by Mrs Kinnell’s late husband, Jack, an accomplished amateur landscape painter who died in 2000.

Ms Parsons said: “Mrs Kinnell let me wander round the house to look at her husband’s pictures, and I was taken aback when I got to the top of the stairs and saw this image of a large group of people observing the Crucifixion scene.

“It’s a highly intricate piece of art, instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Watkins’ work.

“I find it a very thought provoking picture. It’s disturbing to see distress on the faces of characters just like those in Oor Wullie or the Broons which you’ve been familiar with since childhood.”

Dudley Watkins’ creation of couthy characters over decades at Dundee publisher D C Thomson’s Sunday Post, Dandy, Beano and other titles led to commercial success and a special place of affection in the Scottish psyche.

But many found it difficult to deal with his Christian commitment, which extended in the 1950s and 1960s to the creation of evangelical comic strips and an ambition to adapt the Bible into illustrated format.

This reluctance was partly due to historian Tom Nairn’s 1960s judgement that Scotland would only be bearable when "the last Kirk minister has been strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post".

And Jean Kinnell experienced the timidity provoked by Mr Nairn’s comment some years ago when she contacted the Sunday Post about her Crucifixion painting after reading about a Watkins work achieving a high price at auction.

She said: “When they heard it was a religious picture, they weren’t interested.”

However, Watkins' religious life was not aligned with the mainstream Church of Scotland.

His presence is still recalled by members of the Dundee For Christ organisation, whose Resurrection Day event at the Caird Hall in Dundee on Easter Sunday is expected to attract a capacity audience of over 2,000.

One said: “Dudley Watkins was a member of the denomination called the Church of Christ. Their building, Salem Chapel, in Salem Street off the Constitution Road in Dundee, is now the United Reformed Church.

“Dudley was also the president of the Dundee United Evangelistic Association and Tent Mission, whose premises were formerly in Peter Street, off the Murraygate.

“They were given new premises by Marks & Spencer as part of a deal to allow Marks to expand their shop. The new Tent Mission was then built in the 1960's in the Marketgait - now the Methodist Church. Latterly, Dudley's wife was a regular attender at the Steeple Church.”