Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta featured in the Financial Times

'But it is the Pentland cottage-garden, gifted to Finlay and his wife Sue by her family, that remains the most enchanting draw. In the 1960s, when the newly-weds moved in, the estate was gloomily called Stonypath, and a single ash tree stood in the garden. Over the course of the Finlays’ 40-year occupation, it was reborn as Little Sparta, a kind of live-in artwork spread over seven acres. Sculptures and landscaping by Finlay gradually filled the garden with ideas, designed to make cryptic allusions to classical myths, maritime adventure and antiquity. The name was inspired by the Spartans, warriors who — like the artist — had a plucky and somewhat isolationist fighting spirit.

By most accounts, including his own, Finlay was a mercurial figure. He asked for a single occupation to be inscribed on his family headstone — poet — but art and language were always intertwined in his work. After early study at Glasgow School of Art, he moved into concrete poetry. Later, he became a great polymath and collaborator. This brought the art world to Little Sparta, rather than taking Finlay into it: he was reluctant to rub shoulders in the clubby galleries, but proved adept at transferring his playful, fragmentary verse to works on paper, stone and other media, aided by other craftspeople.'

Image: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Apollon Terroriste, 1987
View in Little Sparta, The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay in the
Pentland Hills of Scotland, 2003
© The Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay
Courtesy the Artist’s Estate and Victoria Miro
Photo by Murdo Mcleod

April 17 2025