Arngask Library Glenfarg Perthshire Scotland

Tour Scotland Spring 4K travel video of the former Arngask library on visit to Glenfarg, Perthshire. This building dates from 1892. Architect was A.N. Paterson, designed in Scots Renaissance style, single storey harled with red sandstone dressings. Alexander Nisbet Paterson was born at Berkeley Terrace, Glasgow on 3 May 1862, the youngest son of Andrew Paterson and his wife Margaret Hunter. The Hunters were sewed muslin manufacturers. When his father was orphaned at nineteen his uncle James Hunter appointed him a foreman in his warehouse and took him into partnership two years later at the early age of twenty one. He was a good watercolourist as well as an astute businessman and most of his family developed artistic interests. James, born 1854, became the Glasgow Boys painter and William, born 1859, was later to own a Bond Street art gallery in London. Alexander was educated at the Western Academy and at Glasgow Academy. His parents wanted him to enter the church and he attended Glasgow University where he graduated MA in 1882. He really wanted to become a painter like his eldest brother but his parents could not afford two painters in the family. As they were friendly with the Burnets, architecture was decided on as a compromise. Probably after some initial training in the Burnet office, he followed John James Burnet's advice and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the atelier Jean Louis Pascal in 1883. By that date his eldest brother James had returned from Paris, where he had studied in the studio of Jacquessen de la Chevreuse and the atelier of Jean-Paul Laurens. At the Ecole he also spent time in the atelier of M Galland who specialised in decoration. His record at the Ecole was very competent but not especially distinguished, probably because he had entered it with rather less practical experience than most. During the vacations he made study tours of France, Holland and Belgium. In 1886 Paterson returned to the Burnet office to find John Archibald Campbell had been taken into partnership. There he worked first as an improver and as a draughtsman, his skill as a watercolourist being much in demand for the presentation perspectives of the firm's projects. In 1889 he won the RIBA silver medal and passed the qualifying exam. In 1896 having won the Godwin scholarship Paterson took a career break to visit the USA and produced A Study of the domestic architecture in the United States of America in the year 1896. On his return he married Margaret (Maggie) Hamilton, sister of the Glasgow School painter James Whitelaw Hamilton in 1897, his father giving him Turret, one of the four houses in Helensburgh he had financed to help start Paterson's practice; his father and mother themselves moved to Torwood House, Rhu in 1893 as all the family were keen on sailing. Two years later, in 1899, Paterson achieved some fame by coming a close second to James Miller in the competition for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901. Paterson died at Helensburgh on 10 July 1947. He was survived by Maggie who died on 21 January 1952, his artist daughter Mary Viola and a son Alastair Hamilton Paterson who entered the army and rose to the rank of Major General.

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