Thomas Symington Halliday


(T.S. Halliday)

1902 - 1998

Stained glass artist, painter, sculptor and teacher. Born in Thornhill (Dumfries and Galloway), the son of a grain merchant, Halliday grew up on a farm. Educated at Ayr Academy, he trained in art at the Glasgow School of Art. He spent his career is teaching, first at Prestwick High School, Ayr Academy and in Alloa before serving as Principal of the Art Department at the High School of Dundee from 1941 until his retirement in 1965.

His first stained-glass commission in 1927 for a church in Ayr, but his work is displayed across the world. Local examples include windows in St. Mary's Parish Church (1966) and McCheyne Memorial Church both in Dundee, the Second World War Memorial in the High School of Dundee and glass in Dundee Crematorium (1965).

Many of his paintings included views of the Tay Bridge and Dundee, seen from his studio window at his home in Wormit. His carving of a stag was presented to the HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1958, while two of his paintings of dockyard scenes were purchased by the HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He also designed the coat of arms for the town of Newport-on-Tay.

Halliday maintained a lengthy friendship with the artist J.D. Fergusson (1874 - 1961). He was awarded an MBE in 1963 but never stopped working and was noted as Scotland's oldest working artist at the time of his death.


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