What are they talking about?: Deciphering “A conversation on the path” by Alexander Ingnatius Roche (1861-1921).
Alexander Ignatius Roche RSA, RP, NEAC, Conversation on the path, Oil on canvas (44 x 29cm) , framed (58 x 43cm). Signed.
Alexander Ignatius Roche’s painting A Conversation on the Path is notable for its formal technique, subject matter, and evocative symbolism. Executed with academic precision, the brushwork reveals little of the artist’s personality, suggesting an intentional distance or neutrality in painterly expression. Yet the painting’s composition and content invite closer inspection, offering layers of interpretation that speak to both its historical context and the identity of the artist himself.
At first glance, the scene presents an idealised rural encounter: a man in highland dress, with a white horse and dog, engages a woman and three children along a country path. The two girls hold baskets and a younger child is being held up by the woman standing behind. One of the girls pulls a miniature wooden cart behind her, whilst about them is an agitated duck with a group of its young, chasing after one that has found itself left behind. In the background a church spire rises above the pastoral landscape. A second woman and child recede into the background, continuing down the same path.
While the setting might initially seem to indulge Victorian sentimentality, complete with bucolic charm and in-keeping with the impressive gilt frame, this interpretation is complicated by the painting’s deliberate anachronisms. The highland attire of the central male figure, in particular, situates him not in the late nineteenth-century, but perhaps as much as a hundred years earlier. He is wearing a kilt of red tartan, stockings, a grey/brown overcoat and black hat. The shape of the hat may be significant, as it does not appear to be the traditional "tam o' shanter" or "Balmoral bonnet" both of which lie asymmetrically, flat on the head, usually with a "toorie " (pom-pom). Nor is it a "Glengarry bonnet", a taller military style hat that one associates with formal Scottish attire. The symmetry of the hat coupled with its uprightness on the back of the head implies that it may in fact be a tricorn hat.
The tricorn hat was highly fashionable amongst soldiers and sailors throughout much of Europe in the eighteenth century. In the Scottish context tricorn hats and bonnet style caps were both worn in combination with tartan kilts by the Jacobites during this period. The suggestion that the man is a Jacobite rebel is strengthened by the accompanying horse. Symbolically speaking, in art and literature a white horse is typically associated with heroism, nobility and virtue, whilst socially it distinguishes him as a member of the highland gentry; in military terms, an officer who would have been more likely to have worn a tricorn hat as a symbol of his relative status.
Unfortunately the tartan pattern is unidentifiable in Roche's painting, but there was no shortage of clans who wore red tartan in the uprisings of 1715 and 1745, such as the MacDonalds of Clanranald and Glengarry, the Cameron of Lochiel, the MacGregors, the MacKinnons and the Stewarts of Appin. The specificity of the figure's tartan is not decisive to the argument that he is a Jacobite officer though. It is doubtful that the artist would have had such detail in mind when painting a figure group at distance. However, he would have had an established Victorian archetype in mind. Whilst in reality there was much individual variation between families’ tartan patterns within the same Clan, the Clan patterns became standardised in the Victorian era, and so the period imagined the Jacobite rebel - brave, dashing, and loyal, in works of art and literature by the likes of John Pettie, John Everett Millais and Walter Scott's influential "Waverley novels" (1814-32), as wearing a checked tartan, often red and with a debonair tricorn hat and white cockade at the front. The figure in the painting embodies a romanticised archetype that held powerful resonance in Victorian Britain at the time when Roche was painting.
The Jacobites were Catholic highlanders who supported the deposed Stuart royal family, and sought to restore James II of England and VII of Scotland to the British throne after he was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Their movement led to several uprisings in Britain and Ireland, most significantly those of 1715 and 1745. These rebellions were violently suppressed, culminating in the Battle of Culloden in 1746 when they were decisively beaten, and subsequent attempts to dismantle highland culture.
The harsh treatment of Scottish Catholics remained a subject of debate and protest in Britain throughout the following century. John Everett Millais's The Order of Release, 1746 (1852) offered a symbolic portrayal of a Jacobite soldier, filtered through Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics and political nuance. The painting has been interpreted as a commentary on both the changing status of women within society and the treatment of Catholics in Victorian Britain, Scotland in particular. Whilst clearly different in terms of style and emotional intensity, there are several similarities between the Roche and Millais pictures in their artistic presentation of the Jacobite officer, including the accompanying dog, a symbol of loyalty.
John Everett Millais, The Order of Release, 1746 (1853), Tate Britain, accessed 05/07/25.
In Roche’s painting, further symbolic cues deepen the potential meanings. The child pulling a wooden cart signifies innocence and rural simplicity; the duck shepherding her offspring mirrors the maternal care shown by the mother; indeed the outstretched arms of the smallest child seem to reflect the wings of the agitated mother duck. The terracotta water jug, carried by the woman, alludes to domestic virtue. These are visual motifs familiar to eighteenth and nineteenth century genre painting and signal Roche’s engagement with a broader visual lexicon. Perhaps most striking is the church in the background, partially obscured by encroaching vegetation, a poignant suggestion of decline or transformation, possibly reflecting the fading influence of religion or a critique of societal change.
Roche’s decision to craft a consciously retrospective scene raises questions about his intentions. Was he simply catering to Victorian tastes for nostalgia, or was he invoking the Jacobite imagery for more personal or political reasons?
Born into a working-class Catholic family of Irish descent in Gallowgate, Glasgow, Roche was educated by the Marist Brothers at St Mungo’s Academy, a school for disadvantaged Catholic boys. Gallowgate was an area that attracted many immigrants fleeing violence and famine in Ireland during the mid-nineteenth century. His education enabled his social ascent, eventually leading to his studies at the Glasgow School of Art and participation in the influential Glasgow Boys circle. His prolonged stays in Italy, as well as his early marriage in a Catholic ceremony in Florence to an Italian woman, suggest a sustained engagement with Catholic identity and continental artistic traditions.
The late nineteenth century in Glasgow was marked by rapid industrialisation and demographic shifts, including a significant influx of Irish Catholic immigrants. The city’s population doubled in approximately thirty years, largely due to the demand for ship building during the hey-day of the British Empire. Sectarian tensions, particularly between Catholic and Protestant communities, were heightened during this period and institutions such as St Mungo’s operated in a contested cultural space. Moreover, political movements such as Irish and Scottish Home Rule gained traction, often in alliance with Labour and Socialist groups advocating for working-class rights.
Within this context, Roche’s painting takes on a more politically nuanced dimension. The nostalgic portrayal of Jacobite identity may reflect not only a romantic ideal but also a coded assertion of Catholic or nationalist sentiment. The painting, likely produced between 1880 and 1896, coincides with Roche’s European travels and precedes his later career as a society portraitist in Edinburgh. It thus represents a formative moment in his career, shaped by his upbringing, education, and the socio-political currents of his time.
Ultimately, A Conversation on the Path invites multiple readings. The idealised rural setting may be a deliberate fiction, constructed by an urban artist nostalgic for a lost cultural identity. His attitude towards this identity seems uncertain. The white horse is traditionally a symbol of heroism and virtue, but we cannot see its head and it seems small, weary even. The church in the background appearing as a romantic ruin has connotations to a time and religion firmly in the past. The setting appears idyllic, an innocent, rural community that could only exist in the mind of someone who lived most of their life in the midst of a rapidly industrialising city. Yet all around are symbols that this life is crumbling around the protagonists: from the rickety wooden fence on the right side to the rough stone wall at the left which is being precariously held up by an improvised wooden buttress. The male figure, enigmatic, central, and with his back turned, may function as a surrogate for the artist himself, a motif reminiscent of Romantic imagery such as Caspar David Friedrich’s well-known painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c. 1817). Is this figure returning from exile, or preparing to depart? What is his relationship to the woman and children? – and what are they talking about? These questions remain unanswered, yet they underscore the painting’s emotional and intellectual depth. Roche challenges viewers to engage with the painting as an interpretive puzzle; one that reflects both a specific cultural moment and the enduring complexities of identity, memory, and historical narrative.
