Fionn MacColla was the pen name of the writer Thomas Douglas MacDonald. He was born and brought up in Montrose, where he became acquainted with Hugh MacDiarmid who edited the 'Montrose Review' from 1919 to 1929. In 1928, MacColla and the artist Edward Baird, both passionate Scottish patriots, joined the newly founded National Party of Scotland. Baird wrote that this was his “attempt to paint a modern and distinctively Scottish portrait” and that both he and the sitter had “a sense of being part of a re-vivified Scottish Culture”.