St. Monance Kirk by John Guthrie Spence Smith (1880-1951) depicts a church/kirk along a coastline, with the village visible on the left side. Smtith employs thick, dry strokes of paint across elements of the painting to capture in patchwork-like detail the coloured segments of the buildings and clouds. The figures in the foreground are also in solid groupings of colour, contrasting the otherwise brown, green, and red of the village colour palette with black, white, and dark blue. The overall textured feel and the colour tones of the piece create a lively sense to the work, complimenting the sunny day depicted in the piece. 

Smith was well known for his landscapes, often containing architectural components, seen here with the attention to detail in the church's overall architectural structure especially with the attention to the window lattice. The influence of Colourist movements is also present here in the solid groupings of rich colour throughout the work, from the darker green tones to the bright green of the grass. This kirk is the St Monans Auld Kirk located in Fife, Scotland and is best known for its distinctly shaped spire, likely also drawing Smith's attention to it as the subject of this work. 

John Guthrie Spence Smith, 1880-1951

A landscape and architectural painter, Smith was born in Perth, Scotland. As a child, an attack of scarlet fever robbed him of speech and hearing and attended a specialist school in Dundee to compensate for this. He studied at Edinburgh School of Art and at the Royal Scottish Academy's Life Class, where Robert Burns and Charles Hodge Mackie were important influences. D.M. Sutherland was a fellow student. Both exhibited at the Edinburgh Group's early exhibitions in 1912 and 1913 and at the re-formed group's three exhibitions in 1919-21. Spence Smith exhibited regularly throughout his career at the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts. He painted mostly landscapes and townscapes. Apart from two visits with his mother in 1911 and 1912 to northern France, based in Étaples, then a favourite painting ground of the Colourists, he spent all his life in Scotland.