This large oil was painted circa 1985-1987 and hung on the wall of Piper’s studio in Fawley Bottom until sometime after Piper’s death in 1992. The picture was exhibited at ‘John Piper: A retrospective’, Waddington Galleries 1994, and is illustrated in colour in the catalogue. In “John Piper”: Ashmolean Museum; Oxford 1992, David Fraser Jenkins in writing notes on an Indian ink, gouche and chalk of “The Abbey from the churchyard , Arbroath”, which was a study for this oil, says: “The abbey of Arbroath, near Dundee, was the subject of two of Piper’s grandest oil paintings of the 1980’s. He painted two views, of the interior of the ruined nave, and of the west window seen from the exterior, so making a a pair reminiscent of his views of Coventry Cathedral after the bombing. This watercolour is a completed version that was eventually enlarged again into one of the oil paintings.” “The mood is again sombre, as at Coventry, and a startling change after the sunny landscapes of France and Britain. The composition of Piper’s work, whether figurative or abstract, often implies a human association, as if there were some echo of figures whether on a large or small scale……the obelisks and memorials in the churchyard recall a Calvary, just as the reds and blues recall Blake’s illustrations to the inferno of Dante. The flame red of the sandstone, and the mauve sky, renew the contrast already much used in war paintings but invented by Blake. Francis Spalding writes that during convalescence after surgery in July 1987:” John tentatively turned his attention to ceramics, then began painting an hour or so each day. His attention focused on an enormous study in oils of Arbroath Abbey, its elongated red and orange fragments rising in defiant glory against a black and blue swirling sky, a dramatic and disturbing picture which he had thought about while in hospital.” Pg 494, “John Piper Myfanwy Piper: lives in Art” Oxford University Press, 2009. The oil painting also features, as a work in progress, in the background of a studio portrait of Piper at work on the cartoon for the John Betjeman Memorial Window which was completed in 1986. The photograph, dated c.1985, is shown on page xiv, and on the rear dust jacket, of “John Piper and Stained Glass”; June Osbourne, Sutton Publishing 1997. The Tate General Archive contains three photographs taken of the Abbey in South East Scotland by Piper in May 1984. TGA 200410/6/2/765-767.