This shows Columba landing in Kintyre, not Iona. It was painted in a rocky bay, The Gauldrons, a little to the west of Machrihanish, and the figures and boats were added in the studio after the landscape was completed. McTaggart seems to have aimed to show the radiant light of early morning, in sympathy with the concept of Columba as the forerunner and bringer of Celtic civilization and artistic culture to Scotland at the start of the Christian era in Britain.