Peter Anson - Oblate August 22 1889 - 10 July 1975 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Peter F. Anson was born in 1889. From 1910 to 1924 he was a member of the Benedictine brotherhood on Caldey Island, and one of the twenty monks who followed Abbot Aelred Carlyle over to Rome in 1913. Reverting to lay-life at the age of thirty-five he soon began to make a name for himself as an author-artist. The first of his thirty-six published books appeared in 1927. He was the Co-founder of the Apostleship of the Sea in 1921, and later on became a founder member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. In 1969 he retired to his former island-home as an eventide-home, where he continued to keep busy with drawing, painting, and writing. He enjoyed the rare status of a Reformed Cistercian choir-oblate. Failing health compelled him to seek a mainland home and in 1974 he was accepted into the community of Nunraw Abbey, East Lothian. He died in St. Raphael's Hospital in Edinburgh, 10 July 1975 and is buried at Nunraw. Anson's detailed water-colours and pen drawings of ships reflected his interest in every aspect of their design and gear; the illustrations for his many books on fishing craft are as carefully researched as the statistics which traced the tragic decline of the fishing industry throughout the early years of this century. It was a decline which Anson felt keenly, for he spent most of the years between 1930 and 1970 on the North East Scottish coast, living in a series of small cottages near the harbours of Portsoy, Banff, Macduff and Ferryden. If you would like to see some of Peter Anson’s paintings, they can be viewed here: The Moray Council Museums Service On-line Anson Exhibition